


Transitive

by MoreThanSlightly (cadignan)



Series: Transitive [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Cooking, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dancing, Drawing, F/M, Fluff, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Hair Washing, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadignan/pseuds/MoreThanSlightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows many languages, too many, or not enough. His brain is a soup of thoughts and voices and words. The redheaded woman speaks Russian. The blond man speaks English. English is a strange one. There is this word 'hurt,' which is sometimes about transferring pain. He hurts the blond man. Subject, verb, object. But sometimes the pain doesn’t go anywhere. He hurts. Who hurts?</p><p>(Post-CA:TWS poly-shipping party.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know Yakov/Yasha and associated Russian diminutives imply Jewishness. I love the headcanon that Bucky is Jewish and will probably explore that later in the fic.
> 
> The plan is to do a chapter of this fic for all of the pairs within the foursome (Bucky/Nat, Steve/Bucky, Steve/Sam, etc). The fic does not currently merit its rating, but it will some day, I promise. I may write some of this fic slightly out of order, in which case pieces of it might get posted as parts of an AO3 series.

The red-headed woman calls out to him in a language that the other two don’t understand. It takes some time to realize that they don’t understand, and more time to realize that the language is Russian. He’s slow these days, when there are no more orders and debriefings and mission reports. It troubles him. There is too much information in the world. Too many decisions.

He used to be fast. Efficient. Precise.

It was better that way. It hurt less.

Why did he think that? Who hurt? Him? No. He hurt people.

The woman comes closer. She walks into the alley where he is standing. She calls him “Yakov.” The name is even less familiar than “Bucky.” But he puts it together. Jacob. James. Like the James Buchanan Barnes in the museum.

He does not speak back to her when she names him.

“Yakov,” she says again. “James.” Her voice is soft. She is not soft. He may be slow, but he is not that slow. It is important to remain ready, always ready. Most of his equipment is states away at the bottom of the Potomac. He has a knife sheathed at his waist, one in his boot, and a SIG-Sauer P220 in a shoulder holster under his jacket. He had purchased the jacket and the holster with cash taken from a dusty safehouse on M Street. He had not made eye contact. His hands had been steady. He had said “thanks.” It had been a successful interaction. Unremarkable.

He tenses, eyeing her from his position in the shadows, half-hidden behind a dumpster. The hood of her jacket is up. Her hands are empty at her sides. The other two remain on the sidewalk outside the alley, thirty meters away. No visible weapons. Streetlight glints off rain and blond hair.

“We don’t want to hurt you.”

No one wants to hurt. Not him. Not any of them. A cabinet minister with a little grey goatee and blood in his mouth. A lawyer in high heels and a snapped neck. A young dark-haired couple, driving home in their sports car. He never wants to hurt them. Hurting is inefficient. Hurting is not part of the mission.

He had slammed his fist into the blond one’s face.

He doesn’t know why he did that.

It hurt.

But _who_ did it hurt?

He knows many languages, too many, or not enough. His brain is a soup of thoughts and voices and words. The redheaded woman speaks Russian. The blond man speaks English. English is a strange one. There is this word _hurt_ , which is sometimes about transferring pain. He hurts the blond man. Subject, verb, object. But sometimes the pain doesn’t go anywhere. He hurts. Who hurts?

He forces himself to stop thinking. Stop trembling. What is the mission? There is always a mission. Why is he here? Why did he come here? He was following the blond man. The blond man is the target.

The redheaded woman is closer now. Her palms are pale and empty in the darkness. She repeats herself, repeats the names. “I am Natalia Romanova,” she says. She tilts her head toward the sidewalk. “They are Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson.”

He waits. There is always a mission.

“You are watching us, yes?” she asks. He does not answer. “That is why you are here, in New York. In this alley so close to Stark Tower. You have been watching us.”

Yes. That is why he is here. Watching. Waiting. But for what? To see blood in the blond one’s mouth? No. He clenches his fists. He forces his hands open. No more fists. No more blood.

“We will not hurt you,” she says. That is better. Wanting and not wanting is meaningless. There is already too much uncertainty. _Will not_ is certain. But—but—he remains where he is. He looks at the woman. She holds his gaze.

Her sentence is in the wrong order. Object, verb, subject. You, hurt, us. That is what she meant to say. That is how it happened. He remembers. He hurt them. And now they are here in an alley, and the rain is drumming on the metal lid of the garbage can, and everything is too loud and she is mixing up her words and saying _We will not hurt you_.

 _You should hurt me_ , he thinks, as though someone else is speaking in his mind. The voice is young and rough and male. He does not recognize it. But he knows it is true. It is the first thing he has been sure of in a long time. The woman—Natalia Romanova—is a fool to be standing here in the rain with her empty palms. He has: two knives; the SIG-Sauer; the metal fist he is not clenching; the memories of blood pouring and bone crunching. _Hurt_ is not what she should do. Hurting is inefficient.

She is not afraid. She is a fool.

“We will not kill you, either,” she says. “Or imprison you, or torture you, or freeze you, or wipe you, or use you.”

He can hear the two men murmuring to each other on the sidewalk. She never talks this much in English, the black-haired one says. He says it with the breath of a laugh. The blond one does not respond.

“I know what it is to be used,” she says. He does not understand. It is not relevant. If there is no mission, there is nothing. It is the end. But all she has are her two hands. Rain slides down her palms and drips from her fingers. “They don’t know. They will try to understand. But I don’t need to try. I know what it is to have no name, to be no one.”

“I have a name now,” Natalia Romanova tells him.

She said this already. He knows her name. All of this is useless. There is rain trickling through his hair, his clothes, down the naked skin of his back. It is cold. He does not move.

“You have a name, too,” she says. “James Buchanan Barnes. Or, like I said earlier,” she smiles a little, “Yakov.”

The first name shakes something loose inside of him. _You’re my friend_ , he remembers. _But I knew him_ , someone said once. The blond man dropping his shield from the helicarrier. Reckless. So reckless.

He glances toward the street. He doesn’t intend to, but it happens, and she sees. She follows his gaze. “Steve,” she says, in English. Then she switches back to Russian. “You remember him, or almost. You want to remember him. Steve wants you to come home with us.”

He does not want to remember. He does not want anything else inside his mind to shake loose.

She comes closer again. She reaches a hand toward him, and he does not move. She touches his right hand, hanging motionless at his side. They are both wet. Her hand is cool and small. “I will stand here in the rain all night,” she says. It is a warning, but one corner of her mouth lifts. He does not understand.

“Come home with us, Yakov.”

 _Home_ means nothing. _Us_ means nothing. _Yakov_ means nothing. But it is an order, at last. He goes.

*

Steve smiles at him. Sam nods. He does not look directly at them. Natalia leads them into the tower where they live, then into an elevator, then to the forty-second floor. The apartment is large, with high ceilings and big windows. There is only one exit. Other than the door, the only way out is a forty-two story fall.

A long fall—no. Too much noise in his brain already. Nothing else must come loose. He holds himself straight and does not think about falling. He has no reason to think about falling. Both his feet are flat on the floor.

He stops a few meters from the entry. He should scope out the apartment. But Natalia’s hand is still on his hand, and she tugs him forward and to the left. Steve and Sam do not follow. He can hear them talking softly in the other room. Natalia takes him to a bathroom. It is warm in the apartment. The water on his skin is cold. She turns on the faucet and sticks her hand into the running water.

“Bath or shower?” she asks, and he says nothing. That is not a question he knows how to answer. He doesn’t know any answers. Why are they here? What is the mission? “Fine,” she says. “Bath.”

While the tub fills with water, she strips off her water-logged jacket. Her red hair is damp and it sticks to the skin of her neck. Her black tank top is damp, too. Her arms are bare. She is making herself more vulnerable. He is not deceived. She may be a fool, but she is not soft.

She sits on the toilet and unlaces her boots, then takes them off and pushes them aside. She takes off her socks, too. The ankles of her jeans are wet.

“I don’t want to order you around,” she says, speaking as though they are having a conversation. Sometimes the handlers speak to him like this. Sometimes they give him orders in short sentences and then leave. It makes no difference. His response is not required. “But you have to take a bath. You smell, Yakov.”

The tub is full. She turns off the faucet. She puts her hand in the water. “It’s warm. It will feel good. You don’t like to be cold, do you?”

He feels the wet ends of his hair catch in his beard before he even realizes that he’s nodding. She smiles. “Get undressed and get in,” she says. “I won’t look. I’ll leave, if you want.”

He looks at her, then at the door, then at the tub. Is Natalia Romanova a handler or a target or a threat? She was a target and a threat. But that mission failed. He did not kill her. He did not kill the blond man. Steve. He did not kill Steve. He dragged Steve out of the river, _stupid, reckless_ —

He had no orders to do that. It was not part of the mission.

But it was important.

He does not know why. He pushes the question aside. He cannot answer his questions about Natalia, either. If he gets in the tub, he will be vulnerable. She might choose that moment to attack. But she might stop Steve or Sam from coming in. She hasn’t done anything to him yet except talk and touch his hand.

He glances down at his hand, which no one is touching, then puts it behind his back as if he hadn’t been looking. He meets Natalia’s gaze and says, “Stay.”

She turns her back to him while he undresses. He does not know why. He drops his clothes on the floor but places the knives and the gun carefully on the counter next to the sink. He thinks of putting them at the edge of the tub, but she might object. He can reach the sink quickly enough if necessary. But the probability that she will hurt him is low.

The water is warm. It feels good against his chilled skin. She said it would. She had told the truth about that, at least. Once he is submerged in the bath, she walks to the toilet and sits down. She does not look at him. She watches the door. “I would like it if you talked to me, Yakov,” she says. “It has been a long time since anyone has spoken Russian to me.”

It is not an order. But it is easier if he thinks of it as an order, however difficult it is to fulfill. “I have nothing to say,” he informs her. He supposes it comes out in Russian.

He can see her smiling a little. “Funny, to have nothing to say and to say it anyway.”

He is not sure how to respond to that. In truth, the problem is not that he has nothing to say, but that he has too many things to say. What is this. Why are you doing this. Who are you. Who the hell is Bucky? The words do not come together in sentences. His lips do not move. He has a dim memory of breaking his leg: the cracking sound of the bone, the pain, the split pieces not fitting together. Now it is not his femur but his mind that is in fragments.

“There is soap and shampoo, Yakov.”

He is not sure how to respond to that, either. “What is my mission?” he asks her.

She looks at him, then, her green-grey eyes large in the bright light of the bathroom. She searches his face. “Would it be easier if I gave you a mission?”

It is a waste of time, this _easier_ question. There is always a mission. Still, he says, “Yes.”

“The truth is that there is no mission, Yasha,” she says, softening his new name. “It is hard to understand that, I know. But if you need a mission, here it is: learn your name, Yasha. Learn who James Buchanan Barnes is.”

He stares at her. Something bubbles up inside him that he cannot name. He feels his brows draw together. The mission is—no, there is no end to that thought. The mission is the mission. Nothing else matters.

And yet.

The mission is unsatisfactory.

Her lips are moving. She is pressing down a smile. He feels the muscles in his face tighten.

“You do not like it,” she says. “Good.”

It is not good. He looks down into the bathwater, cups one hand and lets water run out of his palm and back into the tub. He thinks of Natalia touching his hand in the alley and then leading him into the bathroom. He cannot remember anyone else touching his hand. He remembers the handles of knives and the triggers of guns and the delicate pulses of arteries. He cannot remember any hands. He looks at his hand, then sneaks a glance at her, then puts his hand back in the water.

Behind him, she moves from sitting on the toilet to kneeling at the edge of the tub near his head. “Yasha,” she says. “Is it okay if I touch you? Will you let me wash your hair? I will be gentle.”

Like so much of what she insists on, _gentle_ is irrelevant. He pretends it is an order, and he nods. She frowns at him, but then says, “Get your hair wet.”

He ducks his head under water, and when he comes back up, she is pouring shampoo into her hands. It smells like apples. Without being asked, he leans back. She puts her fingers against his temples. He nearly flinches, but he keeps hold of himself. She slicks the shampoo into his hair, her fingers pressing against his scalp.

 _Gentle_ is not irrelevant. It is important. It is good. She strokes his hair, combing her fingers through the tangles. She is patient. When she rubs little circles into his scalp, he sighs.

“Good,” she tells him. Then she takes her hands away, which he does not like. “Back under the water. Wash it out.”

He does as she orders. Then she hands him a bar of soap and tells him to scrub himself. He hesitates, thinking of her touching his hair. He must look at her hands a moment too long. “No, Yasha,” she says. “This you do yourself.”

Maybe she will touch him again if he does it correctly.

She doesn’t. She offers him a towel when he is done. He stands up, water pouring off his body, and accepts it. Her gaze darts away from him. Is she afraid? But when he steps out of the bath and wraps the towel around his waist, she looks at him again. The tub is draining noisily. “Take your hair and do this,” she says, demonstrating on herself by gathering her hair together and twisting it to wring out the water.

“Steve and Sam will give you some clothes,” she says. She says their names in English, and the words sound funny mixed in with the rest of her sentence. Steve and Sam remain Steve and Sam even in Russian, but she calls him Yakov and Yasha instead of James or Bucky. He does not mind. He feels no attachment to any name.

He looks at the clothes on the floor.

“Those are dirty. We will wash them, and then you can have them back. You can keep your gun and your knives,” she says, answering a question that he had not asked. He thinks: good. He thinks: she is a fool. He thinks of the mission— _the truth is that there is no mission, Yasha_ —and wonders what will be next. It is terrible not to understand the mission. It is terrible to have so much noise in his head. Thinking is awful.

The noise in his head goes away when she touches him. How can he make that happen again? What does he need to do?

“Yasha,” she says. He does not know how long it has been since she last spoke. He looks at Natalia, and for the first time, he thinks that she is beautiful. And young. But they have been young and beautiful before. He has framed their pretty faces in the scope of his rifle and put blood and brains and skull in their hair. He clenches his left fist, and forces himself to open it. _We will not hurt you_ , Natalia said. He will not hurt Natalia either. “Yasha, we are going to leave the bathroom now. Steve and Sam are outside. They are going to give you some clothes.”

She says the part with their names a little louder, and he hears some shuffling in other parts of the apartment. “We’re good, Nat,” Sam calls in English.

She opens the door and walks out into the apartment. She does not take his hand and lead him like before. He almost doesn’t follow her, but in the end, he does. It is important to do as he is told.

But sometimes it is more important to pull Steve out of a river.

He thinks he would pull Natalia out of a river, too.

*

As Natalia said, Steve and Sam give him clothes to wear. They do not touch him. They do not look at him while he changes. Sam talks. He pays no attention what Sam is saying, but the sound of his voice is nice. Almost as nice as Natalia touching him. Steve is quiet.

They go into the kitchen and Steve pulls half a dozen containers out of the refrigerator. He makes a plate of food and microwaves it. Sam is talking about the food—you’ll like it Steve likes it a good meal always makes me feel better you know there’s leftover chocolate cake too for later if you still want—and Steve is sliding a plate toward where Bucky is seated at the table. Steve keeps looking at him and then not looking at him. His eyes are so blue. He’s so quiet.

Where is Natalia?

There is sliced steak, a heaping serving of mashed potatoes, and a pile of green beans on the plate. He stares at it. Sam slides a knife and fork across the table. “That’s for you,” he says. “I know, it’s hard to believe there’s such exquisite cuisine around here. No thanks to Steve. You’re lucky he didn’t eat every last crumb before you got here.”

Natalia said there was no mission, and no more orders, but it is hard to know what to do without them. The silverware and the plate full of food seem like as a clear a task as he’s going to be given. He eats a bite of steak first.

His eyes go wide.

It’s tender and flavorful. He has no memory of ever eating anything like it, and yet it calls up another world into his memory. He remembers the dull ache of hunger, the aching brightness of the world when he hadn’t eaten enough. And yet still saying _soup again?_ when he came home at the end of the day, because what else was there to talk about.

He keeps eating. The potatoes are creamy. The green beans are just barely firm, flavored with something rich and something just a little sour. He racks his memory, but there is nothing else. They fed him sometimes, a thick and mealy protein-based liquid. At the time, he had been indifferent to it, but remembering the texture makes him grimace. He eats another bite of steak to make the thought go away. And then another, because the steak is good.

Sam grins wide and nudges Steve. Steve nods a little.

Natalia comes back into the kitchen in different clothes. She’s wearing a blue sweater. It’s too big for her. She pulls out the chair next to his, plunks down, and steals a green bean from his plate. She eats half of it in one bite. Bucky glares at her, but then she smiles at him and the inside of his head goes blank. She can have the green bean, he decides. Maybe she can have more than one.

“Is that my sweater?”

It’s the first thing Steve has said in minutes.

“Not any more,” Natalia says. She smiles at him with one eyebrow raised.

“Looks better on her,” Sam says.

Steve glares at Sam and opens his mouth but says nothing. He looks at Bucky. Bucky continues to eat in silence. He has no interest in who owns the sweater. It does look soft, though. Natalia is sitting very close to him.

“You’re no help,” Steve tells Bucky. Bucky blinks, and then Steve’s expression softens. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

“We’re all glad you’re here,” Sam says, and Bucky stares at him for so long that he almost misses the expression of surprise on Steve’s face. Thinking about Steve and Sam makes him feel like he can’t breathe, so he looks back down at his food and keeps eating until the plate is clean. Steve takes the empty plate to the sink when he’s finished.

“Let’s go sit on the couch and watch TV,” Natalia says. She sounds different in English. He can’t say how. Younger, maybe. “Unless you want to sleep?” she asks Bucky.

He shakes his head. How can he control himself if he is asleep? He is dangerous. He hurt Steve and he doesn’t know why. There is no more mission and he doesn’t know what will happen next. What if he hurts them again? He already feels on-edge, with all this not-knowing, and he is awake now.

She nods. He follows her out of the kitchen and into the living room. A couch and two armchairs are arranged around a coffee table, all facing a television screen. Natalia sits down right next to the arm of the couch and pats the space next to her. He eyes the couch warily. Are they all going to sit together? Anxiety and excitement zip through him, twisted together. His thoughts are rapid-fire—possible weapons, exit strategies, Natalia’s next move—but he remains still.

She raises her eyebrows.

Somehow, her silence wicks the words out of him. “What is this,” he says in Russian. “Why are you doing this.”

“Kindness, Yasha,” she says, and for the first time, when she looks at him, her eyes are almost as sad as Steve’s. It makes him want to turn and run. But when he makes eye contact with her again, the expression is gone. “I am doing this because I know what it’s like,” she says. “And I know you cannot put yourself back together alone. But most of all, I am doing this because Steve loves you.”

He considers that, without glancing in Steve’s direction. It is important not to alert Steve to this conversation. Important, but difficult. If he could glance over his shoulder and look at Steve, maybe he could decipher this riddle. Steve loves him? But why? That was not in the Smithsonian exhibit. Perhaps Natalia is lying. He narrows his eyes.

She shrugs, as if she does not care whether he believes her.

Still, she did not answer his question. Her answer only explains Steve’s presence. But perhaps love, like hurt, is transitive. “And you love Steve,” he says, finally arriving at a solution. The brief moment of triumph fades into something else. She loves Steve? And Steve loves him? What is the use of that? None of this explains the four of them being here in this apartment.

She smiles and tilts her head toward him. “Steve is fragile,” she says, which isn’t an answer, but it feels true. “You might hurt him.”

That feels true, too. He shifts on his feet, and crosses his arms over his chest for some reason he cannot identify. “I might hurt you.”

“You can’t hurt me.”

That is false. He has already hurt her. He shot her in the shoulder. He stabbed her in the thigh.

“Sticks and stones,” she says in English, and the phrase _may break my bones_ echoes in his head. She switches back to Russian: “But you can’t hurt me. Not like you could hurt Steve.”

 _I don’t want to hurt Steve_ , he doesn’t say. He can’t be sure. He already hurt Steve.

“So we understand each other,” she says. “I will not hurt you, as long as you don’t hurt him. You can’t hurt me. You might as well sit next to me.” He only sits next to Natalia after she says “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

His memories are all _have to_ and no _want to_.

Natalia smiles again when he sits. He leaves a space between them because—he does not know why. But she says “Can I touch you?” and he nods before the sentence is even finished. He does not understand what is between them—solidarity or kindness or the echo of what she feels for Steve or other feelings whose names he does not know—but her touch is the only thing so far that makes him feel still and whole. She drapes an arm over his shoulders and pulls him closer so that their hips and knees are touching. The blue sweater is very soft. It doesn’t smell like her. It smells… clean. And a little bit like pine needles. He wants to sniff it, but he knows that is not how people act. It is important to act normal. To be unremarkable. Getting noticed interferes with the mission.

There is no more mission, he reminds himself.

It is terrifying that there is no more mission. It is as if the whole order of the universe has been disturbed. No more sunrise. No more gravity. But it is also exhilarating. He can sit next to Natalia and feel the softness of her sweater and the warmth of her body. There is no purpose to this. It is not an order. It feels good.

“Bring us some cake,” Natalia calls to Steve and Sam, who are still in the kitchen. They are talking in low voices, but Bucky is not listening because Natalia makes everything quiet.

“I don’t bring cake to sweater thieves,” Steve says.

He doesn’t sound sad. He only sounds sad when he looks at Bucky. The thought makes his spine go stiff, but Natalia strokes her fingers over his hair and he relaxes again.

“I do,” Sam says, walking over with two plates in hand. “Here you go, Natasha.” He sets the plates down on the coffee table and then pauses. “Look at you. Internationally known super spy and brainwashed-assassin-whisperer.”

“Shut up,” she tells him, but she does not sound angry. Bucky does not care about anything except her fingers carding through his hair. “They are ridiculous,” she says in Russian, “but they bring me cake when I want it, so I put up with them.”

“He called you Natasha,” Bucky says, half-dreaming.

“You can call me Natasha, too.”

“Why is he here?” Bucky says.

“Sam?”

“Does he love Steve too?”

He feels her chest and shoulders shake, but her laugh makes no sound. “You’re very interested in Steve.”

Yes. Steve knew his name. Steve made him remember. Steve is important. But Natasha said _you might hurt him_ and he remembers his fist crashing into Steve’s face. Something in his chest seizes. He can’t breathe. Natasha notices. “Breathe,” she says. “In. Out. In again. Steve is in the kitchen. He is alive and safe. Keep breathing.”

The air returns to his lungs. He is on the couch with Natasha. Sam is seated in an armchair next to the couch, pretending not to watch. Bucky doesn’t look at him. He breathes.

Natasha’s hand slows its movements and exerts gentle pressure until he lays his head on her shoulder. He stays there, with the wool of her sweater pressed against his cheek, for a long time. Natasha talks to Sam about something. Steve comes and sits with them. Bucky pretends not to look at him. The TV gets turned on, and then, awhile later, off. Steve and Sam stand up and stretch and leave the room. Natasha is still there with him, with her hand in his hair. He cannot tell how long the silence has lasted, but eventually she speaks.

“I do not want to lie to you,” she says. “It will be ugly, this process. It will be painful. It will get worse before it gets better. And it will be long. But it will be worth it.”

“For Steve?”

“No, Yashenka,” she says. She kisses the top of his head. “For you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha shows him to a room with a bed. “You can sleep here,” she says. “If you need me, I will be down the hall in the other room. Understand?”

He nods. He looks at the big empty room and the big empty bed. In between dragging Steve out of the river and Natasha finding him in the alley, sleep has come upon him a few times. It’s always sudden and unpleasant. He has no idea why anyone would willingly lose consciousness. He needs to keep hold of himself, and it’s hard enough when he’s awake. He doesn’t want to sleep and he doesn’t want Natasha to leave, either, but he can’t think of a way to say that. She touches his shoulder, looks at him one last time, and then slips out of the room.

She told him—or almost told him—that he should sleep. So he lies down in the bed, resting on his back and keeping his body straight. He closes his eyes. That’s when he hears voices.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Steve.

“You know I’ve been on board this whole time.”

That must be Sam, then.

What are they doing? Impossible to know. Steve and Sam are in the dark of the next room over. They think they are talking quietly. They do not know Bucky is lying awake. “Now,” Sam says, “I can’t say I expected one coffee date to lead to taking down a huge government agency and then becoming roommates with a brainwashed assassin—,”

“He’s _recovering_ ,” Steve interrupts, “and it was more than one date.”

“You being an asshole and running circles around me is not a date,” Sam says. “Don’t start.”

“What about taking down Hydra? You carried me. That was romantic.” Steve is smiling. Bucky is not sure how he knows that, but he knows. He’s also not sure what the feeling in his chest is. He ignores it. Sam is talking again.

“One date,” Sam insists. “ _One date_ and you show up at my house with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen as fugitives seeking cover from the United States government and a heavily armed, well-funded Nazi cult.”

“I am sorry about that,” Steve says. “I know we really turned your life upside down.”

“You’re lucky Nat’s cute.”

“We’re all lucky Nat’s cute,” Steve says. His voice is softer. He’s not speaking in the tone and cadence of jokes like Sam was. Is he sad? Why is Steve sad?

“Are you upset that it was her who got through to him? Because I remember very clearly that her condition for being here, for helping you with this half-assed plan of yours, was that you let her initiate contact.”

Steve sighs. “I don’t know. She made it look—not easy, but—she connected with him. I don’t understand why I couldn’t.”

“Steve. You connected with him when there was no _him_ to connect with. He barely knew his own goddamn name when he dragged you out of that river. Nat got through, of course she did, but you broke that wall. You broke a few bones doing it, too.”

Steve says nothing. Bucky stays very still. He does not even brush against the sheets on his bed. It is nothing new to be talked about as if he is not there—and he isn’t there, because Sam and Steve do not know that he can hear them through the wall—but it is new to feel any interest in what is being said. Him. They are talking about him. Just like they are talking about Natasha. Natasha is a person who makes choices. Natasha is their friend.

What is he?

“She doesn’t trust me with him,” Steve says.

“Well, last time you got yourself shot,” Sam says, and then there are some rustling sounds. Are they in the same bed together? Are they under the sheets together? “No, but for real. You know she’s protecting you, right? You get that?”

“Who says I need protecting?”

“Says the man who routinely hurls himself out of planes and skyscrapers.” _And drops his shield out of helicarriers_ , Bucky thinks. The clarity of his most recent memories is painful. He pushes the thought aside. Sam is still talking: “Please. To hear Natasha tell it, you’ve been sad since you woke up. Makes sense. You lost a lot. And every time you look at him, you look like your heart is about to break all over again.”

“It’s just—him being alive and—and—it threw me. It dredged up some things, too.”

“All your secret gay feelings, you mean.”

“I don’t know what you think ‘secret’ means, but I’ve been photographed at Pride marches all over the country. Not to mention I’m in bed with you right now,” Steve says, and Bucky blinks. Suspicions confirmed. He needs a deep breath after that and he’s not sure why. Steve. Steve and Sam. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t know—he doesn’t know anything. But somehow it feels as though he should have known that. “Also, as people keep telling me, ‘it’s 2014.’”

“Mmhmm.”

“And as Natasha likes to say, they’re secret _bisexual_ feelings, so fuck off.”

“Nobody told me you were such an asshole, or I wouldn’t have signed up for this.”

“I think I made that very clear on our first date at the National Mall, don’t you remember?”

“I told you not to start with that shit,” Sam says. “And don’t think I don’t see you over here making jokes to get out of talking about it.”

It is difficult to follow their conversation when they speak so quickly. They were talking about him, and then they were talking about Steve, and Steve is in bed with Sam, and Steve has—feelings. Bucky forces his lips apart and takes in as much air as he possibly can. He wishes he understood. He wishes he weren’t listening at all. It’s too much. He should have gone to sleep like Natasha told him to.

“This isn’t about me,” Steve says. “Besides, I was asking how _you_ felt.”

“And I told you, because I’m mature and emotionally open, unlike every other person in this house,” Sam replies. There are few moments when no one says anything, but Bucky hears sounds. The first sound is a dull thud, skin on skin, like one of them hit the other. The other sounds are quieter and more difficult to identify.

Kissing. Sex, probably. He is not a child. He knows about sex. It is a good time to kill someone. It makes people foolish and vulnerable. They get distracted. They get drunk. They take late-night cabs home through unfamiliar cities. They take off their clothes with the hotel room blinds open. It is easy to kill them.

Steve should not—

He balls his fists. He can feel the nails of his right fingers biting into his palm. His left hand does not have that problem.

There is a sound inside him but no air to make it come out. The silence yawns over him, ready to swallow him up, but then they start to talk again.

“Steve,” Sam says, sounding serious, “if I ever feel like I’m not where I need to be, you’ll know.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Steve says, “for everything.”

They don’t talk for the rest of the night. Bucky knows because he lies awake and listens.

*

Natasha knocks on his door in the morning. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” he says, because what else would he say? He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, in last night’s clothes, staring out the window. It’s cloudy. The early morning sunlight is weak. The sidewalk is still pockmarked with puddles from last night’s rain. There was a September day like this in Kiev—a long time ago, or maybe last year—where he lay on his belly on the roof of a building for hours, waiting for a shot.

Natasha is wearing different clothes. Jeans and a green t-shirt, no blue sweater in sight. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. “How are you?”

He doesn’t answer that one.

“You didn’t sleep,” she says, coming to sit down on the bed with him. She doesn’t touch him, but her presence is warm.

“I heard Steve and Sam talking,” he says, still looking out the window. He feels very bold offering up this information, speaking freely, as if he has the right.

“Mm,” she says. “About you?”

“I… think so.” He decides not to say anything else. He will watch and wait. It is safer.

“Yasha,” she says. “I am proud of you for surviving, and for holding on to yourself, and for coming here. You are doing well.”

It is an abrupt change of subject. He does not look at her. He cannot look at her. He can only look out the window and see Kiev. And Bucharest. And Dallas. And Algiers. And a hundred other places, cities of snapped bones and rain washing blood into gutters.

And yet she is _proud_.

He feels strange inside when she looks at him like that: like somebody took him apart and put all the pieces back wrong. There isn’t enough room inside him. His heart is pushed up against his ribs. His throat is too tight. His eyes sting. Don’t look at me, he wants to say. But he says nothing. She keeps looking.

“You are here and you are alive and you have a chance to be better,” Natasha says. “That is good, Yasha.”

Pierce was proud, sometimes.

 _No_. Pierce was never proud of him. Pierce was pleased with his toy, or angry with it. You cannot be proud of the thing you crush beneath your heel.

“You choose, now,” she says. “Not them.”

He cannot speak to her. He does not want anybody to look at him. He does not want anybody to be proud of him.But he does. He wants her to look at him just like that. Like she knows him. Like she knows all of him and still wants to look at him.

“You are doing well,” she repeats, more gently. She tilts her head forward, and something in her posture suggests that she might reach for him. He does not tremble, because he is too well-trained. But he thinks: don’t touch me. And he thinks: do. Please do. Please touch me. But she doesn’t. It’s good that she doesn’t. He will crumble if she touches him.

“But I wonder, perhaps, if you are doing well because you had to. Because after you left D.C., you had to run. To survive. You did not have time for anything else.”

She is too close to him. He wants to move away. He doesn’t.

“And maybe you are afraid to find out what is inside you. Afraid that if you let go, even once, you will never grab hold of yourself again.” She pauses. He hates how much she knows. “But now you are here, and you are safe, and I will not let anyone hurt you and I will not let you hurt anyone. And you can fall apart if you need to.”

She cannot make those promises. No one can make those promises. He gets up and walks out of the room. Steve and Sam are in the hallway, and they look surprised to see him.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky does not want Steve to look at him either. He turns his head. It is difficult to turn away from Steve. As much as he never wants Steve to look at him, he always wants to be looking at Steve. From far away, maybe. From different eyes. He wishes he were someone else. Someone who is not so raw. Someone who got put back together with all their parts in the right places. Someone who never got taken apart in the first place.

His gaze falls on Sam Wilson, who smiles encouragingly. They are standing so close together.

He spins on his heel, goes back into the bedroom, and slams the door.

*

Steve couldn’t look more stricken if Barnes had actually hit him. Sam lays a hand on his shoulder. “Still want to go for a run?”

Steve nods once. Sam has to press lightly to get him to move. It’s grey and wet outside, and Steve doesn’t even bother to make jokes as he laps Sam. It’s awful, seeing him in pain. Almost worse than waiting next to his bed in the hospital.

They sit on a bench afterward, Sam weighed down by physical fatigue and Steve weighed down by just about everything but. “You know, all things considered, he’s doing really well,” Sam says.

“I know,” Steve agrees.

“Doesn’t make it any easier that he can’t look at you straight on,” Sam says. Steve’s no good at covering up his feelings, so it’s never hard to guess what he’s thinking about. The media think Steve is repressed because he always keeps his interviews very official. The better word for it is _private_. But he wants to talk about how he feels. He’s not always sure how to do it, but he wants to. Sam has known that almost from the start—from Steve’s first visit to the VA, when Sam talked about losing Riley and Steve said _but you’re happy now_ with the most searching look on his face. 

Steve doesn’t say anything in response to Sam’s assertion. He inhales audibly.

“You’re allowed to be hurt,” Sam says. Steve, as usual, doesn’t say anything. He just looks away. “You’re allowed to be hurt even if you’re also glad he’s back. Two feelings at a time. Hell, go wild. Have three feelings at a time if you want.”

Steve turns toward Sam, a smile tugging at his lips. “I thought you said our bed wasn’t big enough for that.”

“Romanoff doesn’t take up much space,” Sam quips. He can’t resist. Natasha only joins them occasionally, and even that had taken a long time to come about. Once she had come around, he had realized that she loved touching but only sometimes wanted sex. It was totally at odds with her superspy reputation and the general public’s ridiculous idea of her as some kind of cartoon femme fatale seductress, but he had accepted it without question. Natasha didn’t take well to questions. She would tell him if she wanted him to know. 

All of that is beside the point right now. Sam returns to the topic at hand: “But don’t you turn this around on me, Steve Rogers. We are having a serious conversation.”

Steve sighs. He shakes off the joke and looks out across the park. “Do you think it’s selfish to be glad he’s back?” he asks.

“You know there’s a video of Peggy in that exhibit down in DC where she talks about you throwing yourself on a grenade at Camp Lehigh. Back when you only weighed ninety pounds.”

Steve looks genuinely puzzled by this commentary. God, but of course he is.

“I’m just saying, I’m interested in your definition of ‘selfish,’” Sam says. “But for what it’s worth, I think you made the right call deciding he was the kind you save. And we found him, and Nat got him into the apartment, and that’s progress.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“You keep saying that like you’ve never done anything for me.”

“I haven’t, not really.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Did you forget last night already?”

“That was for me,” Steve claims, and then instantly looks crestfallen. “You don’t think—do you think he—?”

“Heard us?” Sam shrugs. It’s not that he doesn’t care. He genuinely doesn’t know. They hadn’t really discussed the particulars of living under one roof with a recovering brainwashing victim. Steve had thought maybe they shouldn’t immediately reveal to Barnes that Steve and Sam were sleeping together, occasionally joined by Natasha, when she felt like it. Sam had kept his mouth shut because the only question he really wanted to ask was _if he comes back to himself, are you going to leave us for him_ and he was afraid he already knew the answer. They never discussed whether Barnes being in the apartment meant a ban on sex. Sam had figured that Steve initiating things last night meant he was cool with it.

“I don’t know what to do,” Steve says. “I love you—and Nat—and I can’t—if he—,”

“Slow down,” Sam says. “I know what we have is weird in any century, but I also know it works. And you know people who have been through some shit are more likely to understand that than most. You take hold of happiness wherever, and however, you find it.” He puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “But how about we cross that bridge when we come to it? Barnes has his work laid out for him already.”

Steve nods, but he looks uncertain. When they go back to the apartment, they find Natasha on the couch with a book in her lap that she’s clearly not reading.

“Is he—,” Steve says immediately, but Sam figures Barnes must be more or less okay from the lack of property destruction and murder in the immediate vicinity. He walks over behind the couch and lays a hand on Natasha’s shoulder. She puts her hand on top of his.

“He’s sitting in the closet in his room,” she says. “He hasn’t spoken since you left. I thought I’d give him some space.”

“And you?” Sam says. He doesn’t expect her to answer. Natasha putting her hand on his is already more candor than she usually shows. But she closes her eyes and opens her mouth.

“I’m—it’s not easy, seeing someone in that condition.”

Sam can’t stand the way Steve looks when he thinks about Bucky: crushed, like he lost the love of his life. He can’t stand it because he loves Steve and hates to see him hurting, but it’s more than that. He knows that feeling. It’s like a strange mirror, his old self in a different form. He always ends up thinking _I was you, once_ and it makes him shiver. It can only be worse for Natasha, looking at Barnes.

Sam squeezes her shoulder. “You know where to find us.”

“I do,” she says. “Barnes does, too, by the way. He heard you last night.”

“I guess that secret’s out, then,” Sam says.

“It’s better, I think,” Natasha says. She glances at Steve. When she turns her face up like that, the light changes and she looks even paler than usual. She looks tired. Still, she smiles wryly at Steve. “Telling the truth, I mean.”

Steve just nods. They must have talked about this before. It’s like that, sometimes, when you date two people at once. Sam likes it. He gets a glimpse of what’s between Steve and Natasha, and he loves them both more for it.

God, they mean so much to him. He didn’t plan to get involved with two people at once. Hell, he didn’t plan to get involved with anyone ever again, after Riley. It hurt too much to think about. But it happened, and now he has to think about what might happen if it falls apart.

Sam needs air. He can only deal with one person’s emotional troubles at a time, and sometimes that person has to be Sam Wilson. “I’m going to the store,” he announces. “Y’all want anything in particular?”

It’s nice, drawing up a list of groceries and walking through the aisles. Regular. Comfortable. He fills the cart all the way up, because there are four of them in the apartment now and Steve eats enough for four more people. Barnes might, too, when he recovers.

Sam feels better after he unloads his ridiculous quantity of grocery bags into the fridge and the kitchen cupboards. Natasha is no longer in the living room, and neither is Steve, so he pokes his head into the other rooms and finds Natasha lying down in her bedroom and Steve sitting patiently outside the closet when Bucky has holed up. None of them are in the mood to talk, so Sam just goes back into the kitchen, where he can set himself a problem that’s easy to solve. He wants to make drunken noodles for dinner, but he’ll wait a little while on that. Barnes might appreciate something familiar. Sam pulls out the slow cooker and starts preparing some chuck roast for later that evening.

Steve comes into the kitchen while Sam is slicing carrots and celery. He circles his arms around Sam’s waist and looks over Sam’s shoulder, down at the cutting board. “I love you,” he says.

“Yeah, sure,” Sam says, but he can’t help smiling. He loves cooking for Steve. There has never been a more appreciative audience. “You love my cooking.”

“And you,” Steve insists, kissing him on the cheek. Steve presses the tip of his nose against Sam, and is probably about to slide down and start kissing Sam’s neck, because the man is insatiable in more ways than one. He’s also laying it on too thick for credibility at the moment, like he wants a distraction. Like maybe he can convince himself he’s okay if he flirts hard enough with Sam. Sam is too busy cooking to take him up on his offer, and too soft on Steve to point out what’s really going on here. Sam has a thing or two of his own on his mind.

“Steve, I’m good with a knife, but if you make out with my neck while I am trying to chop vegetables, we are definitely going to end up in the emergency room,” Sam says. Steve pulls away a little, chastened. “I like having all my fingers, thanks.”

“I’m into you having all your fingers, too.”

“Good Lord. I am trying to cook here. Does celery turn you on or something?”

Sam can feel Steve’s chest shake with quiet laughter against his back. “Okay,” Steve says. He presses a quick kiss to the side of Sam’s neck, clearly unrepentant. “I’ll cool it. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. You looked—upset.”

“I’m fine,” Sam says. It’s true in a relative sense. He’s more fine than most of the people in this apartment. “It catches me by surprise sometimes, all of us together. I didn’t plan on this.”

“I don’t think any of us did.”

Sam lays the knife down on the cutting board, takes a deep breath, and stares at the cupboard in front of his face. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do if we fall apart.”

“You think we’re gonna fall apart?” Steve sounds—hurt? Surprised?

“What if he’s not okay with us?” Sam says, because he might as well get to the heart of it. There’s a very traumatized man curled up in the closet of their guest bedroom, and he was and is the love of Steve’s life.

“I thought we were gonna cross that bridge when we came to it,” Steve reminds him.

“I know,” Sam says. It’s no fun to have your own very reasonable words thrown back in your face. “It’s hard to put it out of my mind.”

Steve nuzzles the back of his neck. “I know just the thing for that.”

“How about you let me finish cooking first?” Sam says, elbowing Steve in the side. “Give me a minute.”

Steve wanders off, presumably to their bedroom, and Sam sings to himself as he finishes chopping vegetables for the pot roast. He gets through all of “The Tracks of My Tears” and is about halfway through “I Second That Emotion” when he realizes he’s no longer alone in the kitchen. Steve would have touched him by now. Even Natasha would have made a sound.

“Barnes,” Sam says, laying down the knife. He doesn’t turn around for a long moment.

Barnes is standing in the kitchen, hovering like a ghost. His eyes are tired and watery blue.

“You hungry?”

Barnes considers the question far longer than he should and then nods. Sam pulls an apple from the fruit basket on the counter, runs it under the tap, shakes it free of water droplets, and then tosses it to Barnes. He catches it and then looks down at his hand with uncertainty.

“Or we have other stuff, if you don’t want an apple,” Sam says.

Barnes stands there, looking from the apple in his hand back up to Sam’s face. Sam is being as still and as calm as he possibly can. Steve trusts him, he reminds himself. He hasn’t killed or hurt anybody in weeks as far as they know. He’s been in the apartment almost a day and so far it’s all good. Sam is still wary, because Sam has some goddamn common sense. But Barnes looks a lot less like terror incarnate and a lot more like a lost soul, standing in the kitchen.

Sam doesn’t expect him to say anything else. They’ll probably just have an extended awkward moment in the kitchen and then Barnes will retreat to his room. Natasha’s the only one who’s gotten him to talk with any success.

But Barnes looks at him, as steadily as he can, and says, “You love Steve.”

Sam nods. He remembers Natasha wryly telling Steve that it would be better to tell the truth, so all he says is, “I do.”

Barnes nods, in understanding or acceptance or resignation, and leaves the kitchen, apple in hand.

Sam turns back to the counter. He hopes that encounter wasn’t upsetting to Barnes. It’s hard to tell. Sam forces himself to breathe deep, regular breaths for a moment, then hums to distract himself. The words come back soon enough, and he finds himself singing again: _Maybe you want to give me kisses sweet / But only for one night and no repeat / Maybe you’ll go away and never call / And a taste of honey’s worse than none at all…_

He picks up the knife and finishes preparing the pot roast. He turns on the slow cooker and goes to find Steve.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been weeks and Bucky can still barely look at him. Recovery’s a long road, Steve knows that, but he’s utterly unprepared for how painful that moment is, the one where Bucky looks away from him, over and over. Bucky hunches his shoulders like he wants to be smaller, invisible, so Steve can’t see him at all. Bucky doesn’t do that when Sam and Natasha look at him. Hell, Bucky will look back at Sam, will even smile at him, and it’s not like they haven’t all seen Nat speaking softly to him in Russian and stroking his hair.

Steve sits down heavily on a bench and kicks the toe of his sneaker against the grass.

He’s not jealous. He just… doesn’t understand.

It’s a gorgeous, cloudless day. He should have brought a sketch book to the park. But that would have required planning, and he didn’t plan to end up here at all. He ran. Steve ran out of his own damn apartment like he’d never run from anything in his life. He’d rather get beat up in an alley than have Bucky turn away from him one more time.

He sits there for a good fifteen minutes, replaying the scene in his mind. Bucky and Sam had been in the kitchen, talking about what they wanted for breakfast. A mundane conversation in anybody else’s world, but a miracle in theirs. And then Steve walked in and Bucky curled in on himself and turned his head to stare at the ground.

“Hey,” Natasha says. It’s not as good an entrance as when she showed up at the vending machine where he’d hidden the drive with her mouth full of chewing gum, but he’s lost in thought, so it still startles him when she plops down next to him.

He hadn’t realized that she followed him. It’s like that, with Nat. He’s not going to ask how she found him here, all the way across the water in Prospect Park, when the last they saw of each other was in the Tower in Midtown. She never answers that kind of question.

“Do you need to mope on this bench in particular, or can we take a walk?”

He doesn’t have the energy to glare at her, but he’s not really in the mood to be mocked.

“Alright, alright,” she says. “Come on, I know something that’ll cheer you up. Or at least distract you.”

She’s already standing, and both of her hands are grabbing his right. She pulls at his arm, and he gets up reluctantly.

“I’m not going to any more movies with you,” he says, because she likes movies where fountains of fake blood spray out after people get slashed to death. “And no dancing, either.”

“I don’t think people go dancing at 10AM on Wednesday morning, even in this decadent future we live in,” she says, a smile on her lips. “Come on.”

Natasha refuses to say another word about where she’s taking him, except to promise that there will be no zombies, axe-murderers, or booty bass. They wander through Brooklyn, and Steve is reminded of how much easier it is to breathe here. They pass trees and brownstones and nobody honks, not even once. Natasha stops in front of an apartment building, one that strikes a balance between shabby and grand, almost like she’s selected it for its perfectly unremarkable mediocrity. She pulls a key out of the pocket of her jeans.

He follows her up the front steps, and when she turns her head to smile at him, the sun catches in her hair. He never forgets how stunning she is, but sometimes the full force of it still surprises him. She turns back, unaware, and unlocks the door. They walk all the way up to top floor—he spends so much time looking at her butt that he doesn’t notice how many flights of stairs it is, and then he feels a little guilty. That’s ridiculous, because he’s seen her naked plenty of times and they’ve slept together, but that’s how it is with them. She teases him about shyness and Catholic guilt, but it’s not really either of those. Everybody else looks at Natasha and sees that face, that body, and nothing else. He doesn’t want to be like that. _I use it_ , she tells him, _it’s an advantage_. She likes being underestimated, or so she says.

She’s in all the political cartoons these days, all lips and eyelashes and tits and ass. Steve is in them, too, but he’s been a cartoon for a lot longer than her. It doesn’t bother him when they draw him all puffed up with muscles and spouting jingoistic nonsense, or swishing his hips at a Pride parade, or stomping on the flag, or punching various heads of state in the jaw. He can get on TV and say what he wants to say any time he wants to. Natasha’s never been a public figure before. She always used to be able to disappear.

It’s hard to have everybody stare at you. Most of them will never see you at all.

Steve sees her. He thinks he does, anyway. She has terrible taste in movies and music, and she laughs at her own jokes, but she’s willing to catch a ride on a flying Chitauri craft to save the world. She likes sleeping in and disgustingly sugary coffee and she sacrificed her anonymity and all of her privacy—put all of her painful personal history on the internet—to take down Hydra. She’s the only person that Bucky will allow to touch him. Steve’s never quite figured out how to tell her that no matter how good the outside of the package is, the inside is better.

Natasha unlocks the door at the top of the stairs, an unassuming wood one marked 4. At first glance, the apartment looks empty. There’s not much furniture, and there are no drapes, so the morning sun is glinting off the wood floor. There’s a mattress in one corner, next to a stack of wood crates and a wingback chair with threadbare green upholstery.

There’s also an easel.

Natasha walks right into center of the room and spreads her arms with her palms facing up. Steve crosses the threshold and shuts the door behind himself. He looks around the room again, which doesn’t take long because it’s tiny and empty. “What is this? Who owns this? How did you get a key?”

Natasha drags the armchair into the center of the room so that the rectangle of sunlight from the window falls right over it. Then she rolls the easel so that it’s facing the chair. She places a brand new box of charcoal in Steve’s hands. She has to wrap his fingers around it to make sure it doesn’t slip out of his grasp as he stares at her.

“This is a studio,” she says, and yes, obviously, but before he can get the words out, she continues, “As to how I got it, I have my ways.”

“Nat, you shouldn’t have—,”

“Wait, you don’t actually think I tortured or killed someone to get this place, right? That was a joke.” Steve rolls his eyes but she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Pepper knows a really great realtor. Sam and I put the deposit together, and the rent’s paid for this month, and I know you’re sitting on decades of back pay, and I thought it might be worth it to you to have your own space. Outside the Tower. But if you hate it, you can break the lease. We won’t be mad.”

“I,” Steve starts, and looks around yet again. The tiny bedroom off to the side is empty, but there’s a bathroom attached, and the room they’re standing in has a kitchenette. On the counter, there are some tubes of paint, linseed oil, turpentine, brushes, vine and compressed charcoal, erasers and a chamois. The easel already has a large sketchbook on it.

Natasha toes out of her sneakers and drops her leather jacket on the floor. “Sorry if we didn’t buy the right stuff,” she says, turning around. “Sam did most of that, so if it’s wrong, blame him.”

It’s more art supplies than he’s owned in his entire life. “No, it’s great,” he says. He picks through the various sizes and shapes of brushes, and then the paints. He could never afford oils before, so he’s no expert, but they look expensive even by 2014 standards. Rose madder, titanium white, lazurite.

When he turns around, Natasha is naked.

“Wow.”

She’s standing there in the sunlight with one hand on her hip like it’s the most normal thing in the world. She raises her eyebrows, waiting. “You gonna draw me or what, Rogers?”

He smiles. “It’d be a sad waste of all this paper if I didn’t.”

It takes him awhile to decide how he wants her to pose. Natasha is patient, and curious, and surprisingly quiet. She takes his directions and also lets him adjust her body. She ends up curled in the chair, resting her temple against the back of the chair and hanging one leg over the arm of the chair. Her other foot is planted against the arm so that her knee is bent and leaning gently against the back of the chair, at a height just below the line of her eyes. The light slants across her body. She faces away from the window. Steve tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, making her profile more visible.

He wants to run his hand down the soft inside of her thigh, but that urge is not entirely artistic.

He worries, for a minute, that he won’t be able to draw her because he’ll be painfully hard the whole time. But when he picks up the stick of charcoal, he sees things differently. Natasha is beautiful, but that is a thought for later. Drawing is analytical. It’s an exercise in measuring, in breaking things down into their component parts and then putting them back together. The body is a collection of forms, cylinders and spheres sculpted in bone and muscle. He drapes her in shadow, working with the tips of his fingers, and then cuts back in with the tip of the eraser to make highlights.

She requests a break after awhile. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but he suspects it’s a long time. Natasha’s ability to stay still is eerie. She stretches, raising her arms above her head and then reaching down to touch her toes. She does not come over to look at the easel. She just smiles at him and settles back into her pose.

“You should get a stereo or something,” she says.

“Mmhmm,” he responds, too caught up in the drawing to do any real talking.

They draw her all wrong, the political cartoonists. Natasha is powerful. She is compact and corded with muscle and she is in control. Even at rest, curled in the armchair with one leg sprawling over the side, she only looks harmless because she wants to.

Steve heard a story on the radio once about a man who had dedicated his life to creating a preserve in Central America to save jaguars. It’s one of the most disappointing things about the future, the way people have encroached on the wilderness and abused the environment. But this man had wanted to change that, and he had. And then one evening, after the preserve was signed into law and the man was planning to leave, he walked from his camp into the jungle one last time to say farewell to the place he had preserved. He was alone. He wasn’t planning to go very far, and he didn’t. He came face to face with a jaguar. It was silent, and almost invisible, except for the glint of its eyes. The man thought it was the grand irony of his life: he was about to be mauled and eaten by one of the animals he had worked so hard to protect. Who runs into a jaguar in the wild and walks away? But the jaguar just looked him, and he looked at it. There was a long moment of mutual staring—the longest moment of the man’s life—and then the cat turned around and walked back into the forest.

They made a lot of it on the radio, like maybe somehow the jaguar knew, like maybe it was a moment of mutual acknowledgement and respect. That was impossible, of course. But it was a good story anyway. Sometimes you’re allowed to look.

Natasha’s eyes are green-grey, not so different in color from the fabric on the chair. They’re half-lidded right now, as if she’s about to doze off. But Steve knows she could spring up from her pose in an instant and be ready to fight. There’s a careless grace to her, at peace and in battle.

Or she appears careless when she wants to. Steve knows well enough by now how much she cares. He has seen her wrap her fingers a little too tightly around a mug of coffee after Bucky does something that reminds her of her past. But he has also seen her smile to herself when she hears Sam singing in the shower.

He draws her smiling now, or hinting at it, with her eyes dreamy and unfocused. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking about from her expression. Her body is on display, but her thoughts are her own. The drawing is a glimpse of something private. It feels right to draw her like that. He’s honored that she is offering him that glimpse.

When Steve finally murmurs “I’m done,” Natasha unfolds herself from the chair and pads across the room to come look at the drawing with him.

He waits for her to say something. Instead she wraps her arms around his waist and presses her cheek against his chest. Surprised and pleased, he drapes an arm over her shoulders. He accidentally smudges charcoal into her bare skin, but she doesn’t react, so he keeps his hand there.

“I think this is the only picture of me I’ve ever liked.”

That’s praise. Steve has seen her stealing Sam’s phone to delete all the photos of herself. And maybe he’s imagining it, but it always seems like the Sunday paper gets tossed into the recycling bin a little faster if there are pictures of Natasha in it.

“He loves you,” she says, so unprompted that it takes Steve a moment to realize she’s talking about Bucky. He hadn’t thought about that in hours. At least Natasha had been right about her ability to distract him.

“I think it’ll be awhile before he lets me draw him naked,” Steve says, and it’s only half a joke. Neither of them laughs.

“He’ll get there,” she says, and for some reason, Steve believes her. “Until then, Sam is raring to go.”

Steve can’t help smiling at that. That will be fun, drawing Sam. Very different from drawing Natasha. She slips out from beneath his arm and goes to collect her clothes off the floor. “You owe me lunch,” she says.

He turns to the sink to wash the charcoal dust off his hands. When he looks at the studio again, Natasha is zipping up her jeans. She’s in motion, half-dressed and smiling at him, in a totally different pose from the drawing on the easel. But it still looks like her.

“Nat?”

She looks up and pushes her hair back from her face. He regrets, for a moment, not painting her in color, if only for the contrast of her hair against the armchair. “Yeah?”

“Thanks,” he says. She shrugs one shoulder and then bends down to pick up her jacket from the floor in a single fluid motion. She turns and walks out the door, down into the tree-lined streets of Brooklyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The jaguar story that Steve thinks about is true and you can listen to it in the "Zoos" episode of WNYC's Radiolab if you are so inclined.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam’s not sure what to make of Barnes showing up in the kitchen, asking him a single question, then leaving with an apple. It’s the world’s least-satisfying ghost story, or maybe the dullest myth. Mostly he doesn’t know what to make of Barnes. He’s an apparition. A sphinx. Someone who just emerged from a long time in the underworld.

He’s still willing to take fruit from strangers, though.

For a man who spends most of his time in silent avoidance of human contact, that feels a lot like trust. Sam wants to be worthy of that trust. He had his misgivings about Steve’s plan to save his old friend—still has them, really—but Sam can’t look at Barnes as he is now without wanting to help him. Before Sam knew Barnes except as a deadly figure emerging from the smoke of chaos, all his worry was for Steve and the flicker of hope that crossed his face every time he talked about getting Bucky back. Now that Barnes is in their apartment, quiet except for the occasional screaming nightmare, Sam has hopes of his own.

It started with an apple. That seems as good a place as any.

“So what did he used to eat?”

Sam’s been over this with Steve. Even in their first-ever conversation: _we used to boil everything_. Sam has been doing some reading on American food habits in the 1930s, and it all lines up with what Steve has told him. Potatoes. Not much meat. Cabbage. Broth. Beans. Fish, if they could afford it. It depresses Sam just thinking about it. Poverty is one thing. Not using seasoning is a whole new level of misery.

Steve shrugs. He pushes his empty coffee mug a few inches forward across the kitchen table. “Same things I’ve told you.”

“Anything he especially liked?”

Steve looks up and off to the side, thinking hard. “Now that you mention it, I guess Bucky did have some favorite foods.”

“Like what?”

“Some years around Christmas, they made these pancakes with shredded potatoes. They were fried. I can almost smell them, just thinking about them,” Steve says. “Mrs. Barnes wasn’t much of a cook but she could fry a potato pancake.”

“Latkes,” Sam says. He’s not sure if he’s more surprised by the food in question, or the fact that Steve doesn’t seem to know the word.

Steve shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Well… they were like latkes. But the Barneses were at Mass every Sunday with the rest of us.” He fixes Sam with an irritated look. “I grew up in Brooklyn. I know what a latke is. I would have said that if that’s what I meant.”

“It never struck you funny that his family made latkes every year around Christmas? Or Chanukah, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“We were kids. We never talked about that kind of stuff. And then it was the war and we had other things to talk about. But Buck’s dogtags had a C on them. I know.”

There’s a lot of pain underneath that _I know_. Steve probably spent a lot of time thinking about the last rites that Barnes never got. Barnes never needed them—maybe for more reasons than the obvious one. Sam decides not to press the issue. “Just sayin’. Some traditions last longer than others.”

Steve blinks, then looks away from Sam. He doesn’t blush, but he might as well have.

“Steve?”

“No, it’s… I guess maybe you’re right,” Steve says, which represents a remarkable moment in their relationship. Sam has never seen Steve concede a point so fast. “About some traditions lasting.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t ask any questions. They’re clearly not talking about latkes any more.

*

Barnes starts appearing in the kitchen regularly.

He comes in silent like he’s gliding on a fucking wire or something. The first half a dozen times, it scares the shit out of Sam, but he gets used to it. Sam cooks dinner sometimes—he’s the best cook of the four of them, but he shares the work because he’s not throwing a damn dinner party every night—but his favorite thing to cook is Sunday brunch. Barnes figures that out quickly enough, and soon he’s in the living room every Sunday morning, sitting on the couch trying to act like he doesn’t have a perfectly good line of sight into the kitchen. Or sometimes he slips into the kitchen and hovers in the background. Sam lets him get away with it the first three or four times, because there are waffles to make and sausages to cook and Marvin and Tammi on the stereo is all the company he needs for cooking. He’s not trying to push Barnes before the man’s ready.

Hell, maybe Sam’s not trying to push himself. Can anybody blame him for feeling some hesitation about hanging out with a guy who recently tried to kill him? A guy who happens to be the world’s deadliest and most feared assassin and, somehow, also the love of Steve’s life.

Sam feels—well, outclassed, to say the least. He’s not the world’s most anything.

That’s life as Captain America’s boyfriend, though. Superhumans and geniuses everywhere. But Sam can only be who he is, and this line of thought is a little heavy for before brunch. Can’t meditate too hard on this stuff or he’ll accidentally pour orange juice into the hollandaise.

Then again, it’s hard to feel outclassed by the guy who’s so fucked up that he can’t manage to say good morning. This is what, week five of Barnes lurking behind him while he makes brunch? Maybe the time is now.

“Hey,” Sam says, not looking up from the egg he’s poaching. “Why don’t you grab a knife and a cutting board and cut up some chives for me?”

No movement.

“You just gonna stand there?”

“You want to give me a knife,” Barnes says. He doesn’t talk much, so his voice is scratchy and his intonation is flat, but he sounds… surprised, maybe.

“Well,” Sam says. “If you were gonna kill me, I figure you wouldn’t need the knife.”

A pause, and then the short, low sound of a laugh from Barnes.

Well damn. Sam is glad not to be looking at him, because he can’t control the expression he makes. But Barnes chops chives like a pro, and then he plates the ridiculous quantity of English muffins and lox while Sam tops it all with poached eggs and hollandaise. It’s two eggs each for Sam and Natasha, four eggs each for Steve and Barnes, although Steve will be hungry in no time afterward. Barnes might be, too, but he won’t make puppy eyes about it like Steve will. Steve will have to make his own damn snack, though, because Sam has poached a dozen eggs this morning and that’s enough.

Barnes is helpful in the kitchen. He doesn’t even need much direction. He doesn’t talk much, but Sam has music to sing along to, so he’s not complaining. Barnes likes the music, too, as far as Sam can tell. He’s not bouncing around like Sam, but he’s not quite as eerily still as he usually is.

“Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing,” Sam sings along. Barnes isn’t moved to join him, but then again, he probably doesn’t know the song. “I got your picture hangin’ on the wall, but it can’t see, or come to me, when I caaaall your name…”

Sam nods at Barnes to start carrying plates and coffee mugs to the table, and Sam keeps singing as they shuttle things from the counter to the table. He hears Steve and Natasha shuffling into the kitchen behind him, as well as some good-natured grumbling about how this music is entirely too upbeat and _loud_ for Sunday morning. But Sam is a morning person, and his stipulation for doing most of the cooking was that he be allowed absolute dictatorial control over the sound system. And he’s a good enough cook that Steve and Natasha agreed.

All Sam’s huge, nebulous, unsolvable worries aside, it’s a good morning. There’s good food and good music and he loves these people and he loves cooking for them. “No other sound—is quite the same as your name—no touch can do half as much—to make me feel better—so let’s stay together!”

Nat’s standing blearily behind Sam as he puts his plate on the table, but he still needs to get his coffee mug off the counter. He figures he’ll spin around and dance her over there, because it’s about to be the last chorus of the song and dancing with Nat is a thrill, both because she’s a beautiful woman and because it’s a secret pleasure of Sam’s to take the world’s greatest spy by surprise before she’s had any coffee.

Sam spins around and grabs—not Nat.

Barnes.

Barnes’s blue eyes go wider than Sam’s ever seen them, not that they’ve made much eye contact before. But now they’re standing in the kitchen, too close together with Sam’s hands on Barnes’s waist. Sam freezes for a second, but then Barnes—well, no normal person would describe his expression as a smile, but it’s not _not_ a smile.

So Sam just keeps dancing. And Barnes comes with him. And miracle of miracles, Barnes is a great dancer. He plucks Sam’s hand off his waist and clasps it in his own, and he puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder, and then they’re spinning around the kitchen. It doesn’t occur to Sam until much later that Barnes adopted the backwards-and-in-heels Ginger Rogers dance role without hesitation, although Sam isn’t exactly Fred Astaire, and neither of them is dressed for the occasion. Barnes is wearing sweatpants, Sam is in plaid pajama pants, and both of them are barefoot.

Sam doesn’t even have to look up to know that Steve and Nat are staring at each other in wonder, because he’d have the same expression on his face if he weren’t concentrating hard on not fucking this up.

The song ends and Barnes lets go of him and sits down at the table like nothing happened.

“Didn’t know you could dance,” Sam says, casual as you please.

“You never asked,” Barnes says. Sam raises his eyebrows, but he’s not sure if he should laugh or not.

Brunch is delicious.

*

Sam makes latkes. Barnes helps him in companionable silence. It’s a good experience, because Barnes seems at ease with him the whole time, and anything is better than the sort of fugue state he enters when things get really bad. The food doesn’t cause any kind of Proustian recall moment, but Steve does a good job pretending not to be disappointed, and everybody enjoys eating it. And the kitchen smells like frying oil and potatoes and onions and sour cream and apple sauce even the next morning, when Sam walks in to get coffee before his run. It makes him smile. It makes him think.

Barnes keeps showing up in the kitchen, almost like he’s looking for something to do with himself. So Sam provides. Dinner gets progressively more complicated. They chop vegetables for hours and then stir-fry them, and Sam teaches Barnes to wrap them into perfect little rolls, which they then deep fry. They make lamb rogan josh and they grind all their own spices. Sam breaks out a Julia Child cookbook he hasn’t ever used—all the recipes are too much work—and they make enough Gruyère souffle for an army. Sam makes Barnes separate all the eggs. He’s eerily precise about it.

It’s fun to have a sous-chef. They move on to dessert, peach pie and layer cake and flan and mousse and more kinds of cookies than Sam has ever even thought about. A lot of it gets eaten, but a lot of it ends up at support group meetings at the local VA. Barnes still won’t attend those, and barely even leaves the apartment, but he seems to be getting better. He looks at Sam more, and even makes the occasional comment.

Today they’re making rugelach, and Sam is rolling out chilled dough on the counter when Barnes says, out of the blue, “We’re out of cinnamon.”

“I’m elbow-deep in flour and the oven’s preheating,” Sam says. “We’re just gonna have to skip it.”

Sam can feel Barnes staring at him, but it takes a long time before the stare is followed by any words. “No,” Barnes says. “That’s not right.”

“We can fill them with jam or chocolate chips or whatever,” Sam says. “It doesn’t have to be cinnamon and sugar.”

“It does,” Barnes insists. “That’s how they’re supposed to be.”

If it were anyone else, Sam would tease them, and he’s almost tempted to tease Barnes. But they’re not there yet. It’s so rare for Barnes to insist on anything. “Yeah?” Sam says.

“Yeah. I just… the cinnamon. It’s important.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Give me a sec, I’ll clean up and put this back in the fridge and run out to the store.”

“I’ll go.”

Sam looks up, and the rolling pin stills in his hands. _Sure you’re ready?_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back. Barnes is offering. He must feel ready. If something happens, they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. That’s the only reasonable way to handle things. He has to let Barnes try this at some point. Might as well be now. “You got your keys? And your wallet and phone?”

Barnes looks irritated by the questions, but he grunts “Yeah” before turning on his heel and walking out the door. Sam silently contemplates the devastated expression Steve will make if something happens to Barnes while he’s out. What if he gets triggered in the grocery? What if someone jostles him and he flings out his left arm and accidentally kills them? What if he runs away and never comes back? What if he gets found and taken down by HYDRA and killed? Jesus Christ, Sam has fucked up. Steve will be crushed. Nat will pretend not to be crushed but she’ll be crushed.

Sam will be crushed, too.

When Barnes walks in the door thirty minutes later with a jar of ground cinnamon, Sam blurts out “Oh thank God.”

Barnes gives him a strange look, and then says, “Did you do a damn thing while I was gone, or did you just stand there?”

Sam shakes his head, looks down at the lump of dough in front of him, and then can’t stop himself from laughing. Good Lord. This is the most emotionally intense baking session yet. While Sam is getting himself back together, Barnes hip-bumps him out of the way and grabs the rolling pin from his hands. He flattens the dough into a thin circle in no time. Sam is still standing next to him at the counter, having been pushed out of the way.

“Make the cinnamon sugar,” Barnes instructs. And then, while he’s slicing the dough into thin wedges, “One time my ma mixed up how much sugar and how much cinnamon she needed, and they came out awful. Your whole mouth would dry up just tasting one. The bitterest fucking thing I can think of, and that’s including myself.”

Sam stares.

“Yeah, yeah,” Barnes says. He waves one hand in the air dismissively, so Sam decides not to comment on the fact that the story—a memory _and_ a joke—constitutes the most words that Barnes has ever said to him. It’s a genuine breakthrough. But he knows better than to play therapist with his friends, and that’s exactly what Barnes is. For now, at least, Sam has better things to do. He reaches for the bag of sugar, and just for good measure, hip-checks Barnes right back.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam finds her. He’s good at that. He knows it’s been a rough few months—for all of them, but for her especially—because he’s good at that, too. She’s sitting in bed, leaning back against the headboard with her knees up, pretending to read. In truth, she hasn’t turned the page in minutes. She doesn’t look up when Sam comes in, even though there are very few people in the world who are allowed to come into her space without an explicit invitation. Three of them live in this apartment with her. They’ve all seen her in varying states of health and consciousness, so there’s no use worrying that her hair’s in a messy ponytail.

She’s wearing the blue sweater she stole from Steve weeks ago. She’s been sleeping in it, so it smells more like her than like Steve’s deodorant. It hasn’t been near laundry detergent since she nicked it. That’s on purpose, at least: Yasha hangs onto the sweater, on bad days, if he thinks she’s not looking. She’s never not looking, but she has manners enough not to mention it.

Sam sits down on the edge of the bed, in the long rectangle of early evening light that’s falling right next to her feet. “Cat socks,” he says. “You know I could probably sell that to _TMI_ for at least a grand. They’d do a big exposé: Black Widow Wears Cat Socks.”

“It’s the last secret I have. Leave me some mystery.”

“The last one, huh? So now I know everything there is to know about Natasha Romanoff.”

“Anything you don’t know, you can find out on Google,” she says, just a little sour. It was worth it. It was. She feels naked, sometimes, and wishes she’d stuck to her plan of developing some new covers. But then there were signs that the Winter Soldier was in New York, and she couldn’t leave Steve and Sam to bumble their way through it without any help.

And maybe she didn’t want to be alone.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Sam says. God, he’s got a nice smile. Wicked looks good on him. “Will Google tell me if you’ll go out with me tonight?”

It’s hard not to smile at that. It’s not like he really needs to romance the girl in the cat socks and the messy ponytail. If he wants something from her, he can just ask. She appreciates the effort on his part. Still, she takes her time snapping her book shut and laying it on the nightstand. “Down to the falafel cart on the corner, you mean?”

“Nah,” he says. “I mean out. Just you and me. We’ll leave the old folks at home.”

“You think they’re ready for that?”

“I think you and me are ready to go out, is what I think. They’ll handle themselves.”

She makes a skeptical face. They’ll probably stay in separate rooms, too terrified to talk to each other, both wound up with enough anxiety to power the Eastern seaboard. But they won’t hurt each other, so there’s that. Yasha lives in fear these days, of himself most of all. _Get angry_ , she told him last night, when he came to stand silently in her doorway like the apparition that he is. But maybe it’s too early for that. His rage is too deep, too dark, too dangerous to deal with right now. Some day he’ll get there. Maybe she should introduce him to Bruce.

Then she sighed and said _come here Yasha_ because he never comes without being asked. He stands in the doorway, sleepless and forlorn, until she says his name. The first time, he woke her when he crawled into her bed without a word. With her heart in her throat, she scolded him in hissed whispers about boundaries and consent. It was awful to be angry at him. Not because she regretted anything that she said, but because he simply accepted her anger. He slumped his shoulders and looked down like a dog waiting to be beaten. _Next time you want something, you ask_ , she said, but that lesson had gone unlearned. He knew not to get into her bed without permission, though. That had stuck.

Spontaneously, she shares with Sam: “He sleeps in my bed sometimes. We don’t sleep together. He just likes the comfort, I think. Don’t tell Steve.”

Sam doesn’t look surprised until her last sentence. “What happened to Natasha Romanoff’s brand new leaf, Ms. ‘honesty is the best policy’?”

“Telling the truth is one thing. Rubbing salt in somebody’s wounds is another.”

“Alright,” he says. “I guess I see that.”

She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. She slouches back against her pillows and the headboard and regards him through half-lidded eyes. “How did we end up in the middle of this, Sam?”

“We followed that cute little ass of his and didn’t look up until it was too late,” Sam jokes. “It’s worth it. Or it will be, if you’ll go out with me.”

“If I’ll go out with you,” she repeats, amused. “Not ‘when’? Scared I’ll say no?”

She’s joking, but she knows it’s close to home. He’s not as scared of her as he was when he first realized who she was, but he’s still not totally at ease with her. So few people are. Clint is. Steve came to respect her during the Battle of New York; he came to trust her as D.C. crumbled over top of them. Yasha does not trust anyone, but he fears her less than he fears most people. While they were taking down Hydra, Sam had generously extended his faith in Steve to her, as if anyone that Steve trusted was trustworthy by nature. And he was willing enough to touch her, to kiss her, when that came to pass. But in the quiet moments when they passed each other in the hallway or both went to make coffee at the same time, Sam had held himself very carefully around her, as though she still intimidated him.

Gradually, he relaxed. She doesn’t know why. She’s never done it this way before: let somebody in the slow way.

“Please,” Sam says. “Like I can still be scared of you after I caught you bouncing around to ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ while you wash the dishes.”

Her eyes go wide. She thought the apartment was empty that day. An embarrassing mistake for so many reasons. The only saving grace of this conversation is that she doesn’t blush.

“Yeah, I saw that,” he confirms. “It was adorable.”

“I could kill you right now.”

“I know,” he says. “Just because I’ve seen the cat socks and the Tina Turner karaoke doesn’t mean I forgot everything else.”

“I guess I’d better go out with you, in that case,” she says.

He makes an offended face. “Not like that,” he says. “You were supposed to tell me how handsome and brave I am, and how you’ve wanted me ever since you first laid eyes on me in the park.”

“Oh, Sam,” she deadpans. “You’re so handsome and brave. I’ve wanted you ever since I first laid eyes on you in the park.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I will rescind my invitation,” he says.

She smirks. “You won’t. You want to know which dress I’m gonna wear.”

“Oh you’re wearing a dress? So we’re definitely going out?”

“We would be, if you’d get out of my room and let me get ready.”

Sam grins wide. Then he stands up and walks out the door. Both views are excellent.

*

Marching into Tony Stark’s office in a sheath and high heels felt no different from infiltrating the Lemurian Star with her guns in hand. They’re both uniforms, images that she’s projecting to the rest of the world for some purpose. It’s all work.

Natasha feels more like herself—if she ever feels like herself at all—in jeans and t-shirts and leather jackets. Unremarkable clothes. Clothes that aren’t proving anything to anyone. Clothes that can hide guns or knives if necessary. And cat socks. She never claimed to be a style icon.

Ever since she doxxed herself and the rest of HYDRA, her life is an ongoing experiment. Steve got to be Project: Rebirth, so maybe she should give her own research a name. _The Adventure of the Woman with No Self_ , maybe, or _The Mixed Up Files of Ms. Natasha A. Romanoff_. Who is this mystery figure? Is she Russian or American? Good or bad? And above all, what does she want?

Natasha huffs and shakes her head at herself. She’ll have to come back to that. In the mean time, she told Sam she’d wear a dress tonight.

Speaking of the mixed-up closet of Natasha Romanoff, she owns clothes enough to become dozens of different people. But Sam likes the Nat who wears her hair in a ponytail and sings along with Tina Turner while she washes the dishes _and_ the agent in the catsuit who broke into Fort Meade and stole his wings back for him. Sam saw both those women and still asked her out. She can be anyone she wants.

She takes out a green dress with the tags still on and pulls it on. The waist is fitted but the short skirt is flared. She doesn’t look like a menacing superspy or like someone who could stride into Tony Stark’s office and boss him around. (She could, though. She could do that in a burlap sack.) She looks… young. Cute.

When Natasha smiles at her reflection, it doesn’t feel like she’s rehearsing a role. She slips out of the dress and cuts the tags off. Maybe she’ll keep this one.

*

Sam takes her to a little French place— _Lyonnais_ , the server corrects—and it doesn’t look expensive from the outside, but inside there’s space enough to walk between the tables and Sam and Natasha don’t have to shout across their tiny two-top to make conversation. The floor is tiled in a black and white mosaic pattern and there are old French tourism posters on the wall. The table is set simply, and the white tablecloth has a red-checked border as a gesture toward the humble roots of the cuisine, but Natasha isn’t fooled. This place is expensive.

“You really pulled out all the stops.”

“I know Steve probably bought you a hotdog off a street vendor and thought that was real romance, but when I try to impress a lady, I do it right,” Sam says.

Steve’s grand gestures tend more toward the life-saving, but they both know that already. “He has other qualities,” Natasha says.

“That he does.”

“Do you ever think about how we make these funny little pairs?” she says, looking up from her menu. It’s an impulse, a thought that’s been bouncing around her brain that she hasn’t spoken aloud to anyone yet. Sam is too easy to talk to. “The two of you both lost someone you loved. James and I… lost ourselves, I suppose.”

“And got it back. Or will get it back, in his case.”

“Most of it,” she says. She’ll never know exactly what she lost, who she could have been. The ugliness of her past will always be a part of her. She has tried to learn to live with that, and James will, too. But she didn’t mean to turn this conversation toward such serious subject matter so soon. She shrugs it off. “Anyway, that occurred to me.”

“There are nicer ways to pair us,” Sam says. “You and I are badass despite not having any serum enhancements, for instance. And we’re young.”

“We don’t hate bananas,” Natasha points out. “Or cable news.”

“Everybody hates cable news.”

“True,” she says, “but nobody hates it with the same combination of righteous disgust and fake-old-man ‘I didn’t fight Nazis for this shit’ attitude that Steve does.”

Sam grins. The waiter returns, and as payback for his earlier correction, Natasha lets her order _velouté de châtaignes_ _à la poule faisane_ roll off her tongue in impeccable French. He looks suitably chagrined, and Sam rolls his eyes a little after ordering a platter of charcuterie.

“Gonna have to leave that poor man a tip for putting up with us,” he says. “I don’t even know what you ordered.”

“It’s a creamy chestnut soup with pheasant,” she says. “No French?”

“Took Spanish in high school,” he says. “I can say a few things in Dari and Pashto, but definitely not ‘chestnut soup with pheasant.’ Although based on your tone and your expression, it sounded a lot more like ‘don’t fuck with me.’ But I’m guessing you know a lot of ways to say that.”

She smiles and settles her hands demurely in her lap. She’s perfectly polite to their server the rest of the evening.

Their food arrives, artfully arranged and as delicious as it looks. Their conversation gets lighter, drifting in between courses and around more somber topics. They talk about where they’ve been in the world and what they like to eat, and they trade bites of each other’s food. Natasha has the fleeting thought that she would only previously have done something so lovey-dovey if she’d been really intent on capturing her mark’s attention. But right now she just genuinely wants Sam to taste how impossibly light and airy her pike _quenelle_ dumpling is. And later, during dessert, when Sam offers her a forkful of _marjolaine_ —almond cake layered with chocolate buttercream—she leans forward across the table and eats the bite of cake right off the fork.

After dessert gets cleared away, the check arrives. Sam takes it right out of the server’s hands. “I know you can afford this, and maybe the most respectful thing to do would be to split it, but I want to.”

“I’m paying next time.”

“So there’s a next time?”

She smiles. Only Sam can make her feel simultaneously like she walked right into something, and like she’s happy to be there. “Yeah,” she says. “There’s a next time.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” He smiles back at her after slipping his card into the folder with the bill. He also catches her shooting a worried look at her watch. “They are just fine,” he says, reading her mind.

“You sound so sure.”

“You know, the other way we might think to pair ourselves is that we’ve been doing a lot of care-taking,” Sam says. “And maybe not doing enough for ourselves.”

“I’m fine,” she says, and then looks down in embarrassment when she realizes how easily she just brushed off her own welfare.

“Between you and Steve, I don’t know who says that faster. At least Barnes will admit he’s not fine,” Sam says. “And maybe you don’t ever need a night off, but I did, so thank you for coming out with me.”

“Oh, are we done?”

He looks at her in surprise.

Natasha almost smiles back. He’s gorgeous and it’s hard not to smile at him. She’s happy. But now that Sam’s pointed out how rarely they step out of the apartment to get some time for themselves, she’s not quite ready to call it a night. She looks right at him. “So you’ll dance with Barnes, but not with me?”

“I didn’t know you danced.”

“I dance.”

“And not just barefoot in the kitchen,” he says.

“You’re never gonna let that go, are you?” she sighs. “Are you gonna take me dancing or not?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says. He grins and offers her his arm as they walk out of the restaurant.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all y'all who have left kudos and comments! Thank you for sticking around while I noodled around with these four and wrote whatever plotless goo I wanted. You have made this fic even more of a pleasure to write. <3
> 
> Two quick notes: there is a reference to kissing where both parties are very drunk in this chapter. I don't think it's enough to warrant a "dubious consent" tag on the whole fic but I did want to warn you just in case.
> 
> And second, just so you don't get your hopes up: there is not actually a foursome sex scene in this chapter. I know I tagged the fic explicit, but I didn't quite get there. But I am planning to write a kind of coda fic with all four of them, I promise!

Steve’s been waiting for Bucky to let him in for a long time now. He’s imagined it countless ways: Bucky will see or feel something that reminds him of their shared childhood, or of some rare and precious good memory during the war. They’ll reminisce and smile and then things will be a little easier between them. Or maybe Bucky will come jogging with him and Sam one day, and he’ll get into teasing Sam or competing with Steve or both, and they’ll flop down on the grass after their run and laugh breathlessly and things will be a little easier between them.

That’s all Steve ever wishes for. He tries not to think _I wish things could be like they used to_ , because he knows they can’t. Sam and Natasha have, in a series of separate and presumably uncoordinated heart-to-heart talks, carefully, gently, very firmly made that clear to him. As if Steve couldn’t be trusted to draw his own sad conclusions.

He doesn’t wish for conversations where they pour their hearts out, or lazy morning sex, or that feeling of just looking at somebody and knowing they’re thinking exactly what you’re thinking. Or rather, he does, but he tries very hard not to.

Instead he waits. He tries to be a calm, steady and supportive presence in Bucky’s life, even a minimal presence if that’s what Bucky wants. Steve has learned to _give him space_ , as Sam and Natasha both put it, independently of each other. He and Bucky never needed space before, so that’s new, but he can deal with it. Bucky is alive and recovering and that’s already more than Steve thought was possible.

It hurts that Bucky seems to dislike or even fear him. Bucky makes eye contact with Sam and Natasha, even talks to them and lets them touch him. Bucky goes into Natasha’s room at night, too. No one has told Steve that, like they’re trying to protect him from it, but he’s not a fool. He’s got eyes. He looks at Bucky, even if Bucky rarely looks back.

But that’s okay. When Bucky doesn’t feel comfortable with Steve, Steve simply leaves the room. It’s not right to push him. Steve puts away his own feelings of disappointment and hurt. Bucky is recovering. It’s a messy process. (Sam says that a lot.) He isn’t hurting Steve on purpose. Steve can take it, besides. It’s important to be there, to be ready, if Bucky ever needs him.

“Ever” seems increasingly long.

But he keeps it to himself. Bucky has enough to deal with. He does need Steve’s feelings heaped on top of all the other burdens he’s carrying.

Still, though, as Sam repeatedly reminds Steve, he does have feelings, and they have to go somewhere. Mostly they go into a reinforced punching bag down in the gym, or HYDRA goons if Natasha’s connections pick up any activity. Sometimes they go into conversations with Sam or Natasha.

Sometimes they come out in the shower.

God, he tries so hard not to do this.

He lets his shoulders sag as the tears welling in his eyes brim over and mix with the warm water running down his face. He tries to cry quietly, but the effort of being quiet bows his head and shakes his shoulders. So he braces himself against the wall and lets it out. Sam had come by earlier and said “we’re going out tonight—you gonna be okay?”, and Steve had nodded, secretly relieved that he didn’t have to go out and pretend to be normal and happy and fine, at least for tonight. There’s no one else in the apartment. No reason to be quiet.

Except that he shouldn’t be crying at all. He has two people in his life who love him, which is a lot more than most people ever get. He’s a goddamn selfish mess.

He can’t say exactly why he’s crying. Because it’s been seventy goddamn years and the world’s different but not always in good ways. Because Natasha popped open a bottle of champagne last week and his first urge was for everyone to take cover. Because he still wakes up shivering in his own nightmare sweat sometimes. Because he woke up in the future and all his friends were dead. Because he woke up in the future and all his friends weren’t dead. Because Peggy only remembers him on good days.

Because Bucky won’t look at him.

Steve turns the shower off and grabs for a towel. Clouds of steam fill the bathroom. He blots at his face and hair, then wraps the towel around his waist. His eyes feel tender. He grabs a tissue and blows his nose. It’s funny—he rarely needs to do that these days. He used to do it all the time. No matter the season, he was laid up in bed with some sickness or another once every few months.

It’s hard to say if things are better or worse, sometimes. Would he give it all up if he could go back? Would he give up the serum if it meant Bucky would look at him again? It doesn’t matter. It’s done. But he draws a shuddering breath anyway. Crying makes it hard to breathe.

Someone lays a hand on his shoulder.

Steve jerks in response, then whips around counterclockwise toward the bathroom door. He already knows whose hand it is. Would know that hand anywhere. He wasn’t expecting it, though. Had thought he was alone.

Bucky moves so silently these days. But there he is, giving Steve a wide-eyed blue stare that could just as well be a mirror. What are they doing? Bucky hasn’t touched him since he came back. They’ve never made this much eye contact. But they’re here, with Bucky’s right hand on Steve’s bare shoulder, and Steve is frozen, terrified and elated all at once. He can’t speak.

Bucky isn’t making things any easier on Steve. His stare shifts from stunned incomprehension to something softer. Steve remembers, half-panicked, that he’s only wearing a towel. But that’s not the kind of look Bucky is giving him. His stare is searching. “I heard you,” he says, as if he’s trying to explain his presence here to both of them.

 _You weren’t supposed to_ , Steve wants to say. _I thought Nat and Sam took you out somewhere_. Because Nat and Sam can do things like that these days. But one wrong word might send Bucky fleeing.

Bucky’s not exactly a chatterbox with anybody but he never seems to hesitate with Sam, and his Russian conversations with Nat flow by too quickly for Steve to catch anything. Bucky even told Sam about a childhood memory last week—“in full sentences and everything,” Sam reported, “like it was totally natural,”—but nothing is easy when it comes to Steve, apparently.

“You’re sad,” Bucky starts.

“I’m not sad,” Steve says immediately, despite all evidence.

“So you cry when you’re not sad?”

He always did see right through Steve’s bullshit.

“No,” Steve says. “Yes. I don’t know.” Absurdly, the question makes tears prick at his eyes again. God damn it. They would have to have this conversation while Steve was naked and fresh from crying, absolutely as vulnerable as he could possibly be. 

“Jesus,” Bucky says, and he sounds so much like Steve’s best friend from another lifetime that Steve’s throat closes up. “I’m no good at talking about my own damn feelings, even on good days. Don’t make me be the one to start this conversation.”

“Too late,” Steve says. He uses as little air as possible, because he’s already choked up and if he laughs, next thing you know he’ll be sobbing all over again. But he could almost laugh: _Bucky_ started this conversation. This extremely intimate conversation about Steve’s feelings. A few minutes ago, Steve was wishing for Bucky to reach out to him in any way at all—any way but this one.

“It’s me,” Bucky says. “You’re okay with Sam and Natasha. And then I walk into the room and you look like somebody ran over your dog.”

Steve can’t say anything to that. The comparison is all wrong. But _You look like somebody revived your dead best friend and brainwashed him into becoming a killing machine, and then you finally got him back but he can’t even look you in the eye_ is harder to say. It’s a lot more words, for one.

“So it’s me,” Bucky continues. “Makes sense. But I can’t—,” he stops. He takes a breath and visibly forces himself to be calm. “Do you—do you need me to go?”

“No, God no, Buck, it’s not like that,” Steve says, and now he has to say something because he can’t live with himself otherwise. The words well up and come pouring out: “I mean, yes, I’m sad about what they did to you, that they hurt you, but you… You make me happy. God. I never thought I’d see you again. Just looking at you makes me so happy I hardly know what to do with myself.” It makes him sad, too, of course. And angry. And lonely. And envious, sometimes, if Bucky is with Nat or Sam. It’s just like Sam said to him earlier: two feelings at once. _Hell, go wild, have three feelings at once_.

Steve lifts a hand to dab at his eyes. Jesus Christ.

Bucky moves forward at that moment. Steve almost flinches. The last few times Bucky’s hand went toward his face ended painfully, and it’s hard to stamp that fight on the helicarrier out of his memory. But he doesn’t flinch. He stays very still. He keeps breathing. Bucky’s hand gently pushes Steve’s hand away from his face, and then the pad of his thumb brushes a teardrop out of Steve’s lower lashes.

It’s such a tender, careful gesture. Steve exhales shakily. Bucky’s not going to hurt him. He never thought that, not really. He still feels on edge, hysterical, about to burst—into laughter or tears, hard to say which.

Bucky starts to withdraw his hand, then he gives Steve a searching look. Steve smiles at him in reassurance, although it’s the smallest, least certain kind of smile. It’s all Steve has to offer right now.

Bucky steps forward and pulls Steve into a hug.

It’s a tight embrace, solid and sure. Bucky puts both of his arms around Steve and presses their bodies together. He’s warm except for the cool metal of his arm against Steve’s bare skin. Bucky is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, which would be unremarkable for anyone else, but it’s only been a few months since they found Bucky shivering and unwashed in a rainy alley. Nat said she had to talk him through bathing because he was so fucked up. Now here he is, comforting Steve.

There it is again, that laugh-or-cry feeling. It just won’t go away.

Bucky has made so much progress. He’s recovering from an unimaginable trauma. He’s relearning his entire life. And Steve is crying in the shower about—what exactly?

“Steve,” Bucky says. His voice surprises Steve. He’s speaking softly but his lips are right next to Steve’s ear. “I can practically hear the gears grinding in your head.”

Steve huffs. “Sorry.”

“You know what Natasha does for me?” Bucky says, after a long moment of silence. They’re still hugging, but Steve doesn’t want to mention it because he doesn’t want it to stop. What if it never happens again? Even in his head, the worry sounds ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking it. He spent every day between waking up thawed in New York and encountering the Winter Soldier in DC wishing that he’d had just ten more minutes, ten more seconds with Bucky—he’s not about to let go now. So what if the bathroom is rapidly cooling and he’s wearing nothing but a towel? Steve’s not moving.

“What?” he says. He’s equal parts curious and anxious, wanting to know exactly what they’ve been doing together, and not wanting to know anything that might reawaken his envy. It’s not that he doesn’t want Bucky to be with Natasha. He wants that. He wants them both to be happy. He doesn’t even need to be included in all of it. But he can’t handle being excluded entirely.

In answer, Bucky raises his right hand from Steve’s back and lifts it to the back of his head. He strokes his fingers down through Steve’s hair very slowly and meticulously, careful not to catch in any tangles. Steve’s hair is too short to be tangled, but he appreciates the concern. Bucky has kept his own hair long and has taken to wearing it in a bun, despite his return to regular shaving in the past few weeks. The first time that Steve had seen him clean-shaven again had been so good and so bad all at once: everything he lost, returned to him, but held just out of reach. That moment encapsulates everything about living with the ghost of James Buchanan Barnes and his flesh-and-blood double.

Bucky finishes drawing his fingers through Steve’s hair, then lifts his hand and repeats the gesture. His touch is light but firm, and he settles into a rhythm that is soothing to the point of being hypnotic. Steve realizes that his head is resting against Bucky’s shoulder after the fact. He would be embarrassed, but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, and being touched feels so good. It’s impossible to care about anything but the gentle pressure of Bucky’s hand. Is this what it’s like to be a cat?

“You used to get hurt a lot,” Bucky says. The tone of his voice is strange and far-away sounding. He’s remembering.

Steve doesn’t want to speak or move or interrupt in any way, but Bucky sounded like he wanted confirmation. Steve can’t deny the truth of it, even though, all these decades later, his first impulse is to say _not that much_. “Yeah.”

“And sick,” Bucky says, surer. “You would’ve never let me do this, back then.”

Steve huffs and it’s not quite a laugh. “Probably not,” he agrees, lifting his head. He’d been angry and afraid all the time back then. It made him difficult, prickly on the outside. He wonders all the time what it was about himself back then that made Bucky decide to be his friend, even though he’s been told all his life not to look gift horses in the mouth. He couldn’t stop himself from questioning it then, examining it from every angle. He’d wanted to know so badly if Bucky felt what he felt, but asking that question might have come at the price of his only friend. Steve had never been brave enough to do that. He’d wanted Bucky’s touch as badly then as he did now, but every hand up, every arm around his shoulders, every playful hit, every hug risked revealing it all. Every touch could have been the last. And the one touch was the last one. Bucky was gone, and Steve had never said a thing.

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t want it,” he says at last.

“I remember pulling you out of fights. And sitting in the bathroom afterward, holding a rag to your nose to stop the bleeding.” Bucky exhales a soundless laugh. “God, you haven’t changed at all.” Steve holds his reply, hoping for more. This is so much detail. Bucky sounds so certain. But he pauses for a minute, and then his eyes meet Steve’s. “I think that’s why I did it.”

“Pulled me out of the river?”

Bucky nods. Neither of them speaks. It’s a hard memory for both of them. Bucky looks guilt-stricken. Steve had been ready to die. He’d been ready for both of them to die. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But now they’re here and they have to live with everything they’ve been through.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

“For pulling me out?”

“For everything before that. Shooting you. Beating you. I never said sorry. Not that it’s worth much.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It wasn’t you.”

Bucky can only look at him in response to that. It hurts to hold his gaze, knowing that no matter how many times Steve says it’s not his fault, he’ll always feel differently. Steve is familiar with the useless ritual of telling someone it’s not their fault, since Nat and Sam tell him so all the time. He’s rarely on the other side.

“Still,” Bucky says, as if that’s the only thing left to say.

“I forgive you,” Steve says. It’s not the same as Bucky forgiving himself, but it will have to do. “I’m sorry about a lot of things, too.”

“If you’re not getting beat up in an alley, you beat yourself up instead,” Bucky says. “I remember that, too.”

Steve makes a face. “Do you remember anything good?”

Bucky presses his lips together like he’s holding back a thought. “Yeah,” he says. “I think so. Sometimes I’m—not sure if things are real. I guess that sounds crazy.” He shrugs his flesh shoulder, and Steve becomes newly aware of how close they’re standing and all the points of contact between their bodies. “But what else do you call a guy who wakes up screaming most nights? I guess I’m crazy.”

“You’re not the only one,” Steve says. “Let’s get back to the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, okay.” He takes a breath. “I think it went something like—,” he stops, licks his lips, and then brings his hands to either side of Steve’s face. He leans forward, and just a little bit upward, and plants a kiss on Steve’s mouth.

Steve’s eyes remain wide open in surprise. He wants to object that this can’t be a memory because they never did this, but Bucky is kissing him. He doesn’t want to object to anything at all.

The kiss doesn’t stay chaste for long. Bucky presses forward, tilting his head, and Steve opens his mouth and lets Bucky deepen the kiss. Steve’s whole body responds. He sweeps his tongue over Bucky’s and his hands find their way to Bucky’s waist, sliding up beneath the hem of his t-shirt to feel the warmth of his bare skin. Steve pulls Bucky’s hips toward his and Bucky comes willingly. The kiss is good—it’s perfect, actually, just the right combination of force and skill—almost like they practiced.

They _practiced_.

The memory that floats to the surface is blurry in all its details, and all its colors are dim, but the sensations that come with it are brilliant and vivid. They kissed. Bucky kissed him. How could Steve possibly have forgotten? He spent his whole life dreaming about it. “We’ve done this before,” he says, a little breathless.

“So it’s real, then.”

“I can’t believe I don’t remember anything about it,” Steve says. He has an excellent memory. This has never happened before: a memory disappearing and resurfacing. And God, what a moment to lose. Does Bucky feel like this all the time?

Bucky smiles. His lips are so red. “I can,” he says. “You were drunk as fuck.”

“I was?”

“We both were. Maybe the drunkest I’ve ever been. I’m not sure how we made it home from the dancehall that night. But after we fell up all four flights of stairs and got back into our apartment, I told you I was gonna teach you to kiss. So that when the right girl showed up, you’d have some practice. Truth is, I was sure I was going off to Europe to die—wasn’t so wrong about that—and I thought, I can’t die without kissing him at least once.” Bucky laughs softly. “But I was too chickenshit for the truth. We didn’t even turn the lights on.”

Steve remembers a whole lifetime of touches bought with excuses—cold, alcohol, sickness, pain, celebration—everything had been currency to him then. He could always justify the incidental touches he allowed himself. _Practice_ sounds like just the kind of thing he would have drunkenly agreed to.

“I felt bad, afterward. It wasn’t how I wanted it to happen. And you never said a word, so I figured we’d pretend it never happened. And then I thought about it so much, it started to feel like I made the whole thing up.” Bucky shifts and Steve adjusts his grip on Bucky’s hips. There’s a lot unsaid there: seventy years of mind-control can’t leave you with much trust in your memory. But what’s amazing is that Bucky remembered, after everything, and Steve didn’t.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. “I like this version better, anyway,” he says. “Or maybe this one.” And Bucky only has time to blink before Steve is kissing him again, pushing his tongue against Bucky’s and pushing at Bucky’s hips, making him walk backwards out of the bathroom. Bucky is eerily accurate at finding his way out the door and down the hall, even backwards and very occupied with kissing Steve. It’s nothing like drunkenly falling four flights of stairs. Except that when they have to turn a corner to make it into Steve’s bedroom, Bucky simply puts his hands under Steve’s towel-clad ass and lifts. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s neck and clamps his thighs around Bucky’s waist without even thinking about it, even though it’s been years since anyone has been able to pick him up.

Unlike Steve, the towel does not go along smoothly with the sudden change in plans. It gets bunched up around Steve’s hips and trapped between their bodies. Bucky doesn’t stop kissing Steve or backing toward the bed, but Steve becomes hyperaware of his own nakedness, pressed up against Bucky’s clothed body. As soon as Bucky sits down at the edge of Steve’s bed, Steve levels the playing field, pulling Bucky’s t-shirt up over his head. It’s only fair that they should both be naked for this. He loves righting wrongs.

Bucky’s t-shirt ends up on the floor alongside Steve’s towel, and then Steve starts in on the fly of Bucky’s jeans. Bucky is mouthing at his jawline now, and nipping at his neck, and he keeps rolling his hips under Steve’s hands, so it takes longer than it should. Steve doesn’t care. He wouldn’t change a thing. Then again, just because he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment doesn’t mean he’s going to take things slowly. He flattens his palms against Bucky’s shoulders and shoves Bucky onto his back, flat onto the bed, then pulls his jeans and boxer briefs halfway down his thighs.

Bucky’s cock springs free and juts toward his navel, thick and flushed and gorgeous. Steve can’t wait to get his lips around it. He glances at Bucky, and finds him dark-eyed but grinning like something’s funny. Steve waits.

“You’re pushy,” Bucky says. “I knew you’d be pushy.”

“Nineteen-thirty-goddamn-five,” Steve replies, because that’s how long he’s been wanting this. It was in August, and they’d pushed the mattress out onto the fire escape, but even in the middle of the night it was still too hot to sleep. Bucky had sat up in bed and stripped off his sweaty undershirt and even in the humid dark, Steve could see he was broad-shouldered and as cleanly muscled as one of the models in life drawing class. Steve had seen Bucky naked before that, but there was something about the way he looked so carelessly beautiful that night. Every inch of his back had been smooth and tanned and kissable and Steve had thought _shit_. And that had been it for him.

Steve leans down and swallows Bucky’s cock down to the root. It tastes as good as he knew it would, salty and earthy, and the weight of it feels just right against his tongue. It’s the sound that Bucky makes that surprises him. It’s quieter than he would have expected, and breathy, like Bucky didn’t even intend to let it slip out. It sparks Steve’s arousal. He vows to get another sound like that out of Bucky, or maybe even a louder sound.

Steve uses his mouth and his hand and makes a mess of both, slicking up his palm and his fingers and his whole face. He starts off slow, and then when Bucky pushes his hips upward, begging for more, thinks _fuck it_ and goes for broke. Steve is good at this, taking the whole length of Bucky’s cock deep into his mouth and throat and carefully swirling his tongue around the head as he slides it in and out. Bucky sighs and scrubs a hand over his blushing face and into his hair, then reaches down to grab at Steve’s head. He’s quiet but he moves a lot, jerking his hips and clenching his hand in Steve’s hair. And then he says “Steve, Steve,” in the most plaintive, lovely tone, and comes in Steve’s mouth.

Steve swallows and smiles at Bucky, who says, “Come here and let me fix that for you.” He nods at Steve’s erection, which is dripping against his thigh, almost forgotten. Steve is good at ignoring his body, a lesson he learned long before the serum made pain a passing concern. Most of the time it’s bad for him, but in sex, it lets him push aside his own needs and focus on his partner, and he has no intention of changing that.

But he knows how to relax and let someone else do the work, too, so he crawls up onto the bed next to Bucky and lies on his back.

“I think I remember how to do this,” Bucky says, and he smiles when he says it but Steve’s heart breaks a little to think of how long it’s been, to think of how many decades Bucky spent without any kind of touch or affection or human connection. Steve will do his best to make up for lost time.

“You don’t have to—,” Steve says, because he doesn’t want to push Bucky too hard. He probably should have said it earlier. But Bucky rolls his eyes, sits up and strips off the rest of his clothes, positions himself over Steve’s cock, leans down and wraps his lips around the head. “Fuck,” Steve gasps. He thought he was good at giving head. He thought Sam and Nat were good at giving head. None of them can touch Bucky. He’s literally and figuratively slick, artfully tonguing the slit of Steve’s cock and then dragging his lips up and down the shaft.

“You ‘think’ you remember,” Steve says, breathless, gripping bunches of bedsheets in each hand to stop himself from jerking his hips into Bucky’s face like he so desperately wants to. “You were hustling me, you asshole.”

Steve would be thrilled that Bucky had teased him if his entire consciousness hadn’t been reduced to the single point of contact between Bucky’s mouth and his cock. Bucky’s eyes glint, and he reaches up with his metal hand to trail the cold tip of his index finger over Steve’s bottom lip. Steve stops talking. Bucky slides his index and middle fingers into Steve’s mouth, and Steve closes his lips over them. It’s hard to focus on Bucky’s fingers in his mouth when something so unspeakably, wickedly delicious is being done to his cock. Bucky is gorgeous, pumping up and down in rhythm, his lips flushed and shiny. He’s not looking at Steve now. His eyes are downcast, and his lashes make crescent shadows against the pink of his cheeks. Some errant locks of hair are falling free from his bun, and Steve reaches down to brush them away from his face.

Steve parts his lips and Bucky takes his fingers out. They’re good at this, knowing each other without words, but it’s been a long few months of silence. Before this afternoon took such a turn, he was crying in the shower at the thought of a future where Bucky never wanted anything to do with him again. Steve’s not missing any more chances.

“I love you,” he says, and he can see Bucky’s smile in the way the corners of his eyes lift.

It doesn’t take long after that. Pleasure spike through him and then he relaxes. The orgasm is great, but the sight and sound and feel of having Bucky in bed with him is worth so much more than that. Bucky crawls up closer to him afterward, settling into the crook of Steve’s arm and laying his head on Steve’s chest. Steve kisses the top of his head.

“You’re alright,” Bucky says, and it takes Steve a second to recognize the sentence as a response to his “I love you.”

Steve cuffs Bucky’s head lightly. “You’re an asshole.”

“But you love me.”

“Go ahead, rub it in,” Steve says, and Bucky rocks his hips against Steve’s thigh in response. Steve laughs.

“I knew that already,” Bucky tells him. “Natasha told me on the first night.”

“Yeah?” Steve says. He had no idea what Natasha had said on the first night. So much of it had been in whispers or Russian or both. It had seemed like witchcraft, the way she drew Bucky out of that alley and into their apartment with such ease.

“I barely knew what was going on that night,” Bucky says. “Or for months afterward. I still don’t, sometimes. It didn’t mean anything to me, then. But it does now.”

Steve stops tracing his fingers idly up and down the column of Bucky’s neck.

“I’m sorry I avoided you all this time,” Bucky says. “I didn’t know what to do and I was terrified of fucking it up. You have to know what it feels like to love somebody to know what it means to be loved, I think,” he continues. “And I know what that feels like now.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, touched. It might not be three words, but it’s as good as. More words might even be better.

“I love you,” Bucky says, “and Natasha and Sam. I love them too. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s more than okay,” Steve says. “It’s perfect.”

“I think we’re better with them,” Bucky says. “Couldn’t get our shit together when it was just the two of us.”

“We had a thing or two come up. The war. You dying. Me dying. We were busy.”

“Still,” Bucky says. “It took us long enough, even with their help. You know, a couple weeks back, Nat kissed me.”

“She did?” With Bucky naked in his arms, both of them still blissfully hazy from sex, it’s impossible to feel jealous. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

Bucky lifts his head and smiles sleepily at Steve, then kisses him. “Well, she loves you, and you love me, so logically…”

“I don’t think it works like that, Buck.”

“I do,” Bucky says, and settles back into his position in the crook of Steve’s arm. His ear is pressed to Steve’s chest like he’s listening for a heartbeat. He falls asleep like that, with Steve stroking his hair. Steve stays awake awhile longer, thinking about how much better this is than anything he imagined.

*

Natasha puts a finger to her lips when they reach the apartment. Their walk home was boisterous and tipsy, so the silence cuts a sharp contrast. She presses her ear to the door, slips out of her heels, and slides the key into the lock quietly. Natasha let Sam feed her a bite of chocolate mousse off his fork earlier tonight, and then spin her around a dancefloor for hours, but she’s always ready to do this.

He takes off his shoes, following her example. The apartment is dark. Steve and Bucky are not in evidence.

Natasha pads through the open kitchen and living room area and then turn the corner to head down the hall. The door to the bedroom where Steve and Sam usually sleep is ajar. She peeks in, then turns to Sam with an expression of wonder on her face. Her mouth is a perfect O. He wants to kiss her, but instead he leans in so that he can see what she’s been looking at.

Steve and Bucky are curled up on the bed, with Bucky’s arms locked around Steve’s waist. For all their curling into each other, bent knees and Bucky’s face pressed into Steve’s shoulder, they’re still taking up a ridiculous amount of space. They’re both deeply asleep. It’s been weeks since Steve has looked that peaceful, even in sleep. And Sam has never seen Bucky look like that. It’s sweet.

Sam’s phone buzzes silently in his pocket and he slips it out.

_THEY FELL ASLEEP SPOONING EACH OTHER OMG_

He shoots Natasha a look. Standing right there, she responds with a gleeful string of heart-eyed emojis and exclamation points. Sam smiles despite himself. It’s a good feeling, seeing Steve and Bucky get their shit together.

When he looks up from his phone, Natasha is smiling at him. He does kiss her, then, combing one hand through her hair and cupping her head. She tastes sticky-sweet, like lip gloss and the ginger liqueur in her last cocktail. She presses her body up against his and his pulse quickens. Then she slips away, and before he can even register the loss, she’s taking him by the hand and leading him into the bedroom. The four of them will barely fit in the bed, but apparently Natasha is determined to try. Sam smiles as she drops her dress on the floor and squeezes into the bed behind Bucky. He strips down and gets into bed beside Steve.

Bucky stirs at the disturbance, but Natasha kisses the back of his neck and says something to him in Russian. He puts his head back down on the pillow, but then he pokes Steve awake. It’s shockingly childish, totally unlike Barnes, and Sam has to repress a laugh. He forgets, sometimes, that they were kids together. But Bucky clearly remembers.

Steve blinks awake, sees Bucky in front of him, and Nat behind Bucky, and then realizes that Sam is behind him. “Oh,” he says, sleepily. “You’re back.”

“Such eloquence,” Natasha says.

“Be nice,” Sam says, just as Steve grumbles, “Fuck off, I just woke up.”

“All of you shut up,” Bucky says. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Well, welcome home to you, too,” Natasha says, amused. But Bucky is already quiet again, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of sleep. If that isn’t proof that they’re all exactly where they need to be, Sam doesn’t know what is. Natasha lifts her head and looks at Sam over Steve and Bucky, and in the darkness, she blows him a kiss.


End file.
